if john westley had not deliberately run away from his guide that august morning and lost himself on kettle mountain, he would never have found the wishing-rock, nor the witches' glade, nor miss jerauld travis.
even a man whose hair has begun to grow a little gray over his ears can have moments of wildest rebellion against authority. john westley had had such; he had wakened very early that morning, had watched the sun slant warmly across his very pleasant room at the wayside hotel and had fiercely hated the doctor, back in the city, who had printed on a slip of office paper definite rules for him, john westley, aged thirty-five, to follow; hated the milk and eggs that he knew awaited him in the dining-room and hated, more than anything else, the smiling guide who had been spending the evening before, just as he had spent every evening, thinking out nice easy climbs that wouldn't tire a fellow who was recuperating from a very long siege of typhoid fever!
it had been so easy that it was a little disappointing to slip out of the door opening from the big sun room at the back of the hotel while the guide waited for him at the imposing front entrance. there was a little path that ran across the hotel golf links on around the lake, shining like a bright gem in the morning sun, and off toward kettle mountain; feeling very much like a truant schoolboy, john westley had followed this path. a sense of adventure stimulated him, a pleasant little breeze whipping his face urged him on. he stopped at a cottage nestled in a grove of fir trees and persuaded the housewife there to wrap him a lunch to take with him up the trail. the good woman had packed many a lunch for her husband, who was a guide (and a close friend of the man who was cooling his heels at the hotel entrance), and she knew just what a person wanted who was going to climb kettle mountain. three hours after, john westley, very tired from his climb but not in the least repentant of his disobedience, enjoyed immensely a long rest with mother tilly's good things spread out on a rock at his elbow.
at three o'clock john westley realized that the trail he had chosen was not taking him back to the village; at four he admitted he was lost. all his boyish exhilaration had quite left him; he would have hugged his despised guide if he could have met him around one of the many turns of the trail; he ached in every bone and could not get the thought out of his head that a man could die on kettle mountain and no one would know it for months!
he chose the trails that went down simply because his weary legs could not climb one foot more! and he had gone down such steep inclines that he was positive he had descended twice the height of the mountain and must surely come into some valley or other--then suddenly his foot slipped on the needles that cushioned the trail, he fell, just as one does on the ice--only much more softly--and slid on, down and down, deftly steering himself around a bend, and came to a stop against a dead log just in time to escape bumping over a flight of rocky steps, neatly built by nature in the side of the mountain and which led to a grassy terrace, open on one side to the wide sweep of valley and surrounding mountains and closed in on the other by leaning, whispering birches.
it was not the amazing view off over the valley, nor the impact against the old log that made his breath catch in his throat with a little surprised sound--it was the sudden apparition of a slim creature standing very straight on a huge rock! his first joyful thought was that it was a boy--a boy who could lead him back to the wayside hotel, for the youth wore soft leather breeches and a blouse, loosely belted at the waist, woolen golf stockings and soft elkskin shoes, but when the head turned, like a startled deer's, toward the unexpected sound, he saw, with more interest than disappointment, that the boy was a girl!
"how do you do?" he said, because her eyes told him very plainly that he was intruding upon some pleasant occupation. "i'm very glad to see you because, i must admit, i'm lost."
the girl jumped down from her rock. she had an exceptionally pretty face that seemed to smile all over.
"won't you come down?" she said graciously, as though she was the mistress of kettle mountain and all its glades.
then john westley did what in all his thirty-five years he had never done before--he fainted. he made one little effort to rise and walk down the rocky steps but instead he rolled in an unconscious heap right to the girl's feet.
he wakened, some moments later, to a consciousness of cool water in his face and a pair of anxious brown eyes close to his own. he felt very much ashamed--and really better for having given way!
"are you all right now?"
"yes--or i will be in a moment. just give me a hand."
he marveled at the dexterity with which she lifted him against her slim shoulder.
"little-dad's gone over to rocky point, but i knew what to do," she said proudly. "i s'pose you're from wayside?"
he looked around. "where is wayside?"
she laughed, showing two rows of strong, white teeth. "well, the way little-dad travels it's hours away so that silverheels has to rest between going and coming, and mr. toby chubb gets there in an hour with his new automobile when it'll go, but if you follow the sunrise trail and then turn by the indian head and turn again at the kettle's handle you'll come into the sleepy hollow and the devil's pass and----"
john westley clapped his hands to his head.
"good gracious, no wonder i got lost! and just where am i now?"
"you're right on the other side of the mountain. little-dad says that if a person could just bore right through kettle you'd come out on the sixth hole of the wayside golf course--only it'd be an awfully long bore."
john westley laughed hilariously. he had suddenly thought how carefully his guide always planned easy hikes for him.
the girl went on. "but it's just a little way down this trail to sunnyside--that's where i live. little-dad's my father," she explained.
"i'd rather believe that you're a woodland nymph and live in yonder birch grove, but i suppose--your garments look so very man-made--that you have a regular given-to-you-in-baptism name?"
"i should say i had!" the girl cried in undisguised disgust. "jerauld clay travis. i hate it. nearly every girl i know is named something nice--rose and lily and clementina. it was cruel to name any child j-e-r-a-u-l-d."
"i think it's--nice! it's so--different." john westley wanted to add that it suited her because she was different, but he hesitated; little miss jerauld might misunderstand him. he thought, as he watched from the corner of his eye, every movement of the slim, strong, boyish form, that she was unlike any girl he had ever known, and, because he had three nieces and they had ever so many friends, he really knew quite a bit about girls.
"yes, it's--different," she sighed, unconscious of the thoughts that were running through the man's head. then she brightened, for even the discomfiture of having to bear the name jerauld could not long shadow her spirit, "only no one ever calls me jerauld--i'm always just jerry."
"well, miss jerry, you can't ever know how glad i am that i met you! if i hadn't, well, i guess i'd have perished on the face of kettle mountain. i am plain john westley, stopping over at wayside, and i can swear i never before did anything so silly as to faint, only i've just had a rather tough siege of typhoid."
"oh, you shouldn't have tried to climb so far," she cried. "as soon as you're rested you must go home with me. and you'll have to stay all night 'cause mr. chubb's not back yet from deertown and he won't drive after dark."
if john westley had not been so utterly fascinated by his surroundings and his companion, he might have tried immediately to pull himself together enough to go on to sunnyside; he was quite content, however, to lean against a huge rock and "rest."
"i'm trying to guess how old you are. and i thought you were a boy, too. i'm glad you're not."
"i'm 'most fourteen." miss jerry squared her shoulders proudly. "i guess i do look like a boy. i wear this sort of clothes most of the time, 'cept when i dress up or go to school. you see i've always gone with little-dad on silverheels when he went to see sick people until i grew too heavy and--and silverheels got too old." she said it with deep regret. "but i live--like this!"
"and do you wander alone all over the mountain?"
"oh, no--just on this side of kettle. once a guide and a man from the wayside disappeared there beyond sleepy hollow and that's why they call it devil's hole. little-dad made me promise never to go beyond the turn from sunrise trail. i'd like to, too. but there are lots of jolly tramps this side. this"--waving her hand--"is the witches' glade and that"--nodding at the rock against which the man leaned--"is the wishing-rock."
john westley, who back home manufactured cement-mixers, suddenly felt that he had wakened into a world of make-believe.
he turned and looked at the rock--it was very much like a great many other rocks all over the mountainside and yet--there was something different!
jerry giggled and clasped her very brown hands around her leather-clad knees.
"i name everything on this side--no one from wayside ever comes this way, you see. i've played here since i was ever so little. i've always pretended that fairies lived in the mountains." she leveled serious eyes upon him. "they must! you know it's magic the way things--are--here!"
john westley nodded. "i understand--you climb and you think you're on top and then there's lots higher up and you slide down and you think you're in the valley and you come out on a spot--like this--with all the world below you still."
"mustn't it have been fun to make it all?" jerry's eyes gleamed. "and such beautiful things grow everywhere and the colors are so different! and the woodsy glens and ravines--they're so mysterious. i've heard the trees talk! and the brooks--why, they can't be just nothing but brooks, they're so--so--alive!"
"oh, yes," john westley was plainly convinced. "fairies must live in the mountains!"
"of course i know now--i'm fourteen--that there are no such things as fairies but it's fun to pretend. but i still call this my wishing-rock and i come here and stand on it and wish--only there aren't so awfully many things to wish for that you don't just ask little-dad for--big things, you know."
"miss jerry, you were wishing when i--arrived!"
she colored. "i was. little-dad says i ought to be a very happy girl and i am, but i guess everybody always has something real big that they think they want more than anything else."
john westley inclined his head gravely. "i guess everybody does, jerry. i think that's what keeps us going on in the race. does it spoil your wish--to tell about it?"
"oh, my, yes!" then she laughed. "only i suppose it couldn't because there aren't really fairies."
"what were you wishing?" he asked it coaxingly, in his eyes a deep interest.
she hesitated, her dark eyes dreaming. "that i could just go on along that shining white road--down there--around and around to--the other side of the mountain!" she rose up on her knees and stretched a bare arm down toward the valley. "i've always wished it since the days when little-dad used to ride that way and leave me home because it was too far. i know that everything that's the other side of the mountain is--oh, lots different from miller's notch and--school--and--sunnyside--and kettle." her voice was plaintively wistful, her eyes shining. "i know it's different. from up here i can watch the automobiles come along and they always turn off and go around the mountain and never come to miller's notch unless they get lost. and the trains all go that way and--and it must be different! it's like the books i read. it's the world----" she sank back on her knees. "once i tried to walk and once i rode silverheels, but i never seemed to get to the real turn, it was so far and i was afraid. at sunset i look at the colors and the little clouds in the sky and they look like castles and i think it's the reflection of what's on the other side. that's what i was wishing." she turned serious eyes toward westley. "is it dreadfully wicked? little-dad said i was discontented and sweetheart--that's mother--cried and hugged me as though she was frightened. but some day i've just got to go along that road."
for some reason that was beyond even the analytical power of his trained mind, john westley was deeply stirred. little jerry, child of the woods--he felt as her mother must have felt! there was a mystery about the girl that held his curiosity; she could be no child of simple mountain people. he rose from his position against the rock with surprising agility.
"if you'll give me a hand i'll stand on your rock and wish that your wish may come true, if you want it so very much! but, maybe, child, you'll find that what you have right here is far better than anything on the other side of the mountain. now, suppose you lead the way to sunnyside."
jerry sprang ahead eagerly. "and then you'll meet sweetheart and little-dad and bigboy and pepperpot!"
