it was earliest spring, and almost the close of a day whose sunshine and warmth had coaxed into bloom many timid roadside flowers, and sent the white petals of farmyard cherries trembling to earth like tiny, belated snowfalls. already the rays of the setting sun were gilding the open space on the top of the mountain where ridge-road and turnpike meet. the ridge-road was only one of the little mountain by-ways that wind through woods and up and down dale as the necessities of the mountain people wear them; the turnpike was an ancient artery connecting north and south, threading cities and villages and farms along its length like trophies on a chain. the shy windings of the mountain road knew nothing more modern than the doctor's vehicle drawn by white rosy, nothing more exciting than the little companies of armed, silent men who tramped over it by night, or crossed it stealthily by day; but along the pike coaches and motor cars pounded and rolled, and a generation or so earlier an army had swung northward over it in pride and hope and eagerness, to drift southward again, a few days later, with only pride left. if, after that, the part of the old road that led from the plain up to the higher valley seemed to lie in a torpor, as if stunned by the agony of that retreat, none the less it remained one of the strong warp threads in fate's fabric.
yet destiny chooses her own disguises. a sick baby had kept john ogilvie on a sleepless vigil in the backwoods for the past fifty hours; and it was not the view from the crossroads, nor the doctor's habit of drawing rein to look out upon it for a moment or two, that made old rosy stop there on this spring afternoon. it was nothing more than a particularly luscious patch of green by the roadside, and the consciousness of her long climb having earned such a reward. rosy was an animal of experience and judgment, well accustomed to the ways of her master, knowing as well as he the houses where he stopped, capable of taking him home unguided from anywhere, as she would take him home this afternoon in her own good time. she had come thus far unguided; for when the sick child's even breathing told the success of his efforts, john ogilvie had almost stumbled out of the cabin and into his buggy, to fall asleep before he could do more than say,
"home, old lady!"
so rosy had ambled homeward, knowing every turn of the road, while the tired man slept on.
the open place where the roads crossed was a famous "look-out." following its own level, the eye of an observer first beheld the tops of other mountains at all points of the horizon save one; at this season the great masses were all misty green, except for occasional patches of the dark of pines, or the white gleam of dogwood, or rusty cleared spaces of pastures; the highroad, on its way to the nearer valley, at first dropped too abruptly to be seen, but reappeared later as a pale white filament gleaming here and there through the trees or winding past farmhouses or fields tenderly green with young wheat. through the gap where the mountains broke apart a great plain stretched, a plain once drenched with the life of men, now gleaming in the rays of a sun already sunk too low to reach over the nearer mountains. all human habitations lay so far below the crossroads that no sound of man's activities ever arose to its height; of wild life there was sound enough, to ears attuned to it—mostly chattering of woodchucks and song of birds, enriched at this season with the melody of passing voyagers from the south. yet none of these would have aroused the tired sleeper in the buggy. a far different sound came up through the forest, and ogilvie was awake on the instant, with the complete consciousness of the man accustomed to sudden calls.
he looked down at the purpling valley, across through the gap to the gleaming plain, and laughed.
"well, rosy, couldn't you take me home till i admired the view?" he asked; and by way of answer the old white mare turned her head to look at him, her mouth comfortably filled with young grass. the doctor laughed again.
"oh, i see!" he said. "a case of afternoon tea, was it, and not of admiring the view? well, let's get along home now."
he looked across the valley to the mountain westward of the gap; its form was that of a large crouching panther, and high up on its shoulder a light twinkled against the shadow.
"come along! mother cary's already lighted her lamp!" the doctor said. "there's bed ahead of us, old girl, bed for me and oats for you! bed, rosy! think of it! and may heaven grant good health to all our friends this night!"
he drew up the reins as he spoke, and with a farewell reach at a luscious maple leaf rosy turned into the pike.
but again there echoed through the woods the unaccustomed sound that had aroused the doctor. this time it was too near to be mistaken; not even white rosy's calm could ignore it.
"hel—lo!" said ogilvie. "a big horn and a noiseless car! pretty early in the season for those fellows. make way for your betters, white rosy!"
he drew well into the green of the roadside; for, highway and turnpike though it was, the road was narrow enough in this unfrequented part to make passing a matter of calculation. the driver of the automobile had evidently discovered that for himself, for he was climbing slowly and carefully, sounding his horn as frequently as if driving through a village. as the car came out upon the cleared space of the crossroads, ogilvie turned, with the frank interest of the country dweller in the passer-by, and with the countryman's etiquette of the road waved to its solitary occupant.
the driver of the car returned the greeting, drew slowly forward, and stopped beside the doctor's old buggy. ogilvie was not so much of a countryman as not to recognize in the machine's powerful outlines the costly french racer. but that was only another of destiny's disguises. the two men met on the mountain-top, took cognizance of each other in that high solitude where the things of the world lay below them; and, face to face, each measured the other and insensibly recognized his worth of character. both knew men; both had been trained to the necessity of forming quick judgments. before they had exchanged a word they were sure of each other; before the hour was out their friendship was as certain as if it were years old.
the occupant of the car had a smile which was apt to be grimly humorous, as ogilvie noted in the moment before he spoke.
"i'm lost!" the stranger said, as if admitting a joke on himself. "i've come around in a circle twice, looking for a place called bluemont summit, and i've sounded my horn right along, hoping somebody would run out to look, somebody i could ask my way of. but you're the first person i've seen this afternoon!"
ogilvie laughed aloud. "no wonder, if you've been blowing your horn all the way," he said. "if you had kept still, you might have come on someone unawares; but nobody around here would run out to look at you in the open."
"is there anyone to run?" the other asked, again with the grim twist of his lips.
"yes, but they are shy, and too proud to seem curious. there may be eyes on us now, peeping through those woods," said ogilvie. "but you're not far from the summit, not far, that is, with that car of yours. this is the battlesburg road, and you're ten miles or so to the northwest of bluemont."
the driver of the car had stepped down into the road to do something to his lamps; it was already so dark that their gleam shot far ahead. white rosy eyed them dubiously.
"only ten miles! jove, i'm glad of that! mountain air does whet a man's appetite! the high court is the best hotel, isn't it?"
ogilvie looked at the other for a moment or two before answering: looked, indeed, until the stranger glanced questioningly up at him, as if wondering at the delay. then he said:
"my name's ogilvie, and i'm the doctor around here. i wish you'd let me prescribe a hot meal at my house for you. it's this side of the summit."
the other man's smile had lost its grimness. "that's mighty good of you," he said. "and you won't have to coat that dose with sugar!"
"i wonder," the doctor went on, "if you'd play host first, and give me a lift? i'm as hungry as you are, and white rosy here likes to choose her own gait. if you'll take me home, we'll be at my house in one tenth the time, and rosy can find her way alone. she's done it many a time."
the other man looked at the old mare, and as he answered stroked her nose and gave her shoulder a friendly smack or two.
"certainly i'll give you a lift," he said. "good of you to suggest it. this old lady looks as if she knew as much as most of us. i hope you won't hurt her feelings by deserting her!"
ogilvie had come down to the road, and already deposited his black bags and his old brown cap in the automobile; now he was busy unbuckling rosy's reins.
"not a bit of it," he said. "she'll come home all the quicker for not having me on her mind! it's home and oats, rosy, oats, remember," he said as he got up into the automobile with the reins in his hand.
"my name is flood—benson flood, and i've been down in virginia buying a little old farm for the shooting they tell me the neighborhood's good for. i never use road maps—like to discover things for myself. that's how i got lost to-day."
ogilvie, leaning back, could inspect the face of the man beside him. involuntarily, his expression had slightly changed at the name. benson flood was as well known to readers of the daily papers as hecla or klondike or standard oil, and stood for about the same thing—wealth, spectacular wealth. the name had heretofore interested john ogilvie neither more nor less than any of the others; now, sitting beside its possessor, it carried a different and more personal significance. it seemed almost grotesquely unreal that an actual living person, a man to be met at a mountain crossroads, could calmly introduce himself as benson flood, and be as frankly and comfortably hungry as anyone else. these thoughts, however, took but an instant.
"well, you've seen a bit of country, anyway," he replied, quite as if his mind were not busy on its separate line of speculation. flood's face was not what he would have expected to find it. it had not lost its lean ruggedness, nor put on those fleshly signs of indulgence that are so apt to follow the early acquisition of great wealth. the well-cut mouth was very firm, and there was something of the idealist, the questioner, the seeker of high things, about the eyes and brow that ogilvie found puzzling and interesting.
"yes; and what a view there was from that crossroads up there! i wish i could transplant my virginia farm to that mountain-top.
"a good many men have seen that view; the army retreated from battlesburg along this old pike, you know."
"ah, battlesburg! i'm from the west, where history is not much more than we fellows have made it; it fairly stirs my blood to come across a place like battlesburg, with its monuments, and its memories, and where lincoln spoke, and all that. i'm going to run up there to-morrow, if the hotel people can set me on my way early enough."
"i'm afraid you'll have to trust me to do that," said ogilvie. "there's my house, there where the light's in the front porch; and—i hope you won't think i've kidnapped you, but i'm going to keep you over night. the hotels aren't open at this time of year."
as the car stopped before the doctor's cottage, flood turned to his host. "oh, i say! that's mighty good of you! won't i put you out? isn't there some place i can go to?"
but ogilvie laughed. "there is not, but i wouldn't tell you if there was! why, mr. flood, i haven't talked to anyone from beyond the mountains for six months!"
