e only one to reach a hand to help these little waifs of the woods!
And who knew or who cared from where they came? They did not look the
Indian, though they acted it to perfection. They would run away and hide
from the face of man. Yet the girl, under the passionate California sun,
was almost blossoming into womanhood. They were called brother and
sister. God knows if they were or no. Break up tribes, families, as
these had been broken up--fire into a flock of young quails all day--and
who knows how soon or where the few that escape may gather together
again, or if they will know each other when they meet, years after in
the woods?

Children are so impressionable. They had heard some one in the camp call
the old Indian woman who sat forever on the porch in the dense foliage,
with the big dog beside her, a witch. They did not know what that
meant. But they knew it was something dreadful, and they shunned and
abhorred her accordingly. Yet the girl knew John Logan, her tall
handsome son, well, and liked him, too.

As they stole along the dim old Indian trail, their necks were stretched
toward the old Indian woman's hut below. They were as noiseless as two
panthers. At last the girl stopped, stood still, pointed and half pushed
the boy before and in through the thicket, past an occasional lonely
cabin, toward the widow's woody home.

This old woman had long been ailing. She was now very ill. You are
surprised to learn of sickness in the heart of the Sierras? I tell you
that if you were to wash down mountains and uproot forests in the
moon--were such a thing possible--the ague would seize hold of you
and shake you for it. Nature is revengeful. But to return to the
wilderness.

What a wilderness this was! Only here and there, at long intervals, a
little cabin down in the deep, dense wood; these cabins scattered as if
the hand of some mighty sower had reached out over the wilderness, and
had sown and strown them there, to take root and grow to some great
harvest of civilization. The narrow Indian trail wound along, almost
entirely hidden by overhanging woods--a trail that turned and twisted at
every little obstacle; here it was the prostrate form of some patriarch
tree, or here it curved and cork-screwed in and out through mighty
forest-kings, that stood like comrades in ranks of battle.

Where did this little Indian trail lead to? Where did it begin? How many
a love-tale had been told in the shadow of those mighty trees