Now they had come to the last day of the journey. The Indian trail had been narrow, the hills went up and down, up and down. Sarah and her father were tired, and even Thomas walked wearily.
By late afternoon they would be home. Home? No, it wasn’t really home, just a place out in the wilderness. But after a while it would be home, John Noble told Sarah it would be. His voice kept leading her on.
“Now we must be about two miles away.”
“Now it is surely a mile . . . only a mile.”
Sarah’s tired feet seemed to dance. She picked some wild flowers and stuck them in the harness behind Thomas’s ear.
“You must be well dressed, Thomas,” she said. “We are coming home.”
She put a pink flower on her own dress and her feet danced along again. Then suddenly she stopped.
“Father, if there is no house where shall we live?”
Her father smiled down at her. “I have told you . . .”
“Then tell me again. I like to hear.”
“I hope to find a cave in the side of a hill,” he said. “I will make a hut for us, and a fence around it. Then you and Thomas and I will live there until the house is built. Though Thomas will have to help me with the building.”
Sarah laughed. “Thomas cannot build a house!” She had a funny picture in her mind of solemn, long-faced Thomas carefully putting the logs in place.
“He can drag logs,” her father said. “Soon we shall have a fine house like Mistress Robinson’s.”
“No,” said Sarah. “Like our own.”
“And why not like Mistress Robinson’s?”
“Because there is no love in that house,” said Sarah.
“You are too wise for your years,” her father told her.
Now they had come to the top of a long, steep hill and they stopped at a place where there were not many trees, only bushes and coarse grass.
“This is one of the bare places,” John Noble said. “The Indians have cleared it for a hunting ground.”
Sarah looked around her fearfully. Behind the bushes something stirred . . .
“A deer,” said her father, and raised his gun. But Sarah clung to him.
“No, Father, no! Do not shoot it!”
“But we must have meat . . .”
“Not now, not now,” Sarah begged. “Its eyes are so gentle, Father.”
“Well . . .” said John Noble. But he did not shoot.
The deer rushed away, its white tail showing like a flag. Then Sarah drew a long breath and looked down.
Below there was a valley. “And you would see the Great River if it were not for the trees,” her father said.
Sarah looked and looked and filled her mind with the beauty of it. It was a beauty that would stay with her all her life. Beyond the valley there were green hills, and beyond . . . and beyond . . . and beyond . . . more hills of a strange, soft and misty blue.