“It might not be around here at all.” They had gone over the pass, which was merely a low dip between two peaks. The forest was thick and obscured both the tops of the mountains on either side and the view ahead. Charlie was ready to start back. “If we don’t, we’ll never get home before dark,” he said.
“You go,” Francie answered. “I’ll just look for fifteen more minutes, and then I’ll come.”
Charlie watched her in silence. His eyes clouded with a mixture of concern and impatience, and she knew he was thinking of Carrie. She gave him a push. “Go on. I’ll probably catch up with you before you get back to the meadow.”
She turned away from him to follow a path that was even fainter than the one on the other side of the pass, but before she had taken five steps he was beside her.
“Uncle James would never forgive me if anything happened to you,” he said. “We go on for fifteen minutes, and that’s all.” The firmness of his step as he moved ahead of her said he would not listen to arguments.
“We’ll see,” she whispered, glad he’d decided to come. But if Charlie heard her he gave no sign.
Francie could see bits of blue sky through the trees, so she knew that out in the meadows and in town it was still afternoon. But here in the forest it was evening—getting darker by the moment. She could hear the contented twitter of birds settling down in the high branches. Squirrels had stopped their scampering and were curling up in their secret holes. With a start she realized that they had moved into a young sequoia grove—the trees were big, but not any bigger than the cedars and pines that shared their space, and they hadn’t even developed the shaggy red bark of their mature years. But they were sequoias, and where there were young trees, there must be a mother tree to have cast the seeds.
Francie felt her heartbeat thudding in her throat. The tree must be around here. It had to be. Ahead, the path seemed to disappear into a blacker darkness—a protected hollow of the forest where night had already descended or the mouth of an enormous cave.
Charlie’s footsteps slowed and then stopped, and she stopped beside him, staring into the darkness. It wasn’t a hollow at all or the blackness of night or a cave. They were looking at the largest sequoia tree they’d ever seen—it filled their vision, blocking everything beyond it from their sight, even the late afternoon sunlight.
“Oh, my God,” Charlie breathed, taking a step back. “Talk about a giant.”
“ ‘The Emperor of Trees,’ ” Francie whispered, quoting Carrie. She put her hand on her hat to hold it on her head and arched back to see the top, but it was hidden by the smaller trees clustered around it. She moved forward, step-by-step, in silence. Her heart was thudding in her chest and she would hardly have been surprised if the tree had spoken in some huge rumbling voice like an earthquake. This couldn’t be real. They must be in some fantasy story.
She reached the tree and, feeling like a tiny elf in a fairy tale, climbed up onto one of the huge buttresses to touch the red fibrous wood. The tree was old beyond imagining. The centuries had cracked and broken the bark until it was shaggy and as full of crevices as the mountainside itself. One enormous fissure was big enough for her to walk into like a cave, and yet compared to the thickness of the tree it was only a small groove. Dark streaks twenty feet above her head showed where a forest fire hundreds of years before had scarred the outer bark. But it was still alive, still growing. She leaned back against the trunk, letting the tree cradle her between its enormous bark ridges. She thought about the tree stump whose rings she’d been counting. “This one must be thousands of years older than that,” she murmured, stroking her hand down the ridge next to her arm. “Think of what it has seen.”
Charlie was pacing out the circumference of the trunk. “It’s more than one hundred feet around!” he shouted. He scrambled up onto the buttress beside Francie, standing with his hands on his hips as he used to do when they were children and played king of the mountain. “This must be the biggest tree in the entire world!”
His eyes were sparkling and he looked the tree up and down as if he were measuring himself against its bulk. “What would it take to bring this one down I wonder.”
“What?” The word came out as a small yelp and Francie stood up straight. “What did you say?”
Charlie looked down at her, but he appeared to be seeing something far away. “Bill Weaver is our best faller, and Jim O’Hara is almost as good, but I’d bet they couldn’t make the undercut for this monster by themselves. We’d need a whole team of fallers working in shifts.” He turned back to the tree. “We’ll have to add another length of saw to the biggest one we’ve got to cut through, and even then . . .” He clapped his hands together and jumped down from the buttress. “But by gum, I’m willing to try!”
Francie stared at him, feeling cold dread move up her arms. Goose bumps rose on her skin. “You’re not going to cut this one down,” she said quietly. “This is Carrie’s tree.”
Charlie swung around. “Don’t be stupid, Francie. This is all lumber company land. Of course we’ll cut it down.” He grinned at her. “If we do it, we’ll be famous!” He struck a pose with his arm up as if he were showing his muscles. “The team that brought down the biggest tree on earth!” He turned back to the tree. “If it doesn’t shatter it could probably supply the wood to build an entire city!”
“No!” Francie stood up on the buttress. “You can’t cut it down. It’s probably the oldest thing in the world. It was growing before . . .,” she stuttered, trying to think, “before Moses, before Abraham.” She could feel tears welling up in her eyes and she shook them away. “How can you even consider it! This is Carrie’s tree!”
Charlie held up his hands. “Calm down. We haven’t cut it down yet.”
Francie gathered up her skirts and jumped off, landing lightly just beside him. “Charlie, if you tell anyone about this tree Carrie will come back and haunt you. I’ll haunt you. I’ll . . .” She searched her mind, trying to think of something that would stop him.
“Okay, okay.” Charlie grinned at her. “I get the point.” He took off his hat, smoothed his hair back, and replaced the hat on his head. “But the lumber company will find this tree eventually It’s only a matter of time.”
Francie felt the blood rush to her face. “They won’t! It’s been here for thousands of years. Carrie knew about it six years ago and nobody else found out. The only way they’ll know is if you tell them!”
Charlie snorted. “If you’re crazy enough to believe that, then the next thing we know you’ll be trying to ride the flume.” He kicked at one of the cones scattered at the base of the tree and tiny sequoia seeds scattered everywhere. “They haven’t been up this way yet because the trees in the rest of the basin are easier to reach. As soon as the company has cut them all, they’ll go for the smaller stands and the ones that are harder to get to.” He glanced up at the tree. “And they’ll come here.” He looked down at her, and she thought she could read sadness in his eyes. “They’ve almost cleared the rest of the basin, Francie,” he said softly. “It won’t be long. I know what I’m talking about.”
Francie sighed. He was right and she knew it. She leaned up against the base of the old tree and crossed her arms. Then she stood up straight. “But the diary said this tree belongs to Carrie. Old Robert left it to her in his will. It doesn’t belong to the lumber company. So even if they find it, they can’t cut it down.”
Charlie was shaking his head again. “Old Robert was a crazy hermit. He probably didn’t know what he was talking about. If the lumber company owns the land, then they own the trees, too.”
“If!” Francie pointed her finger at him. “If the lumber company owns the land. But maybe they don’t. How do you know?”
“They own the whole basin and all the land around it. Everybody knows that. They bought it all just after the government opened up the land for sale.”
“That’s what everybody says,” Francie countered. “But how do you know it’s true?”
Charlie sighed. “It’s all on record at the land office down in St. Joseph. Go down and take a look if you don’t believe me.” He squinted up at the fast darkening sky. “If we don’t get going it’ll be midnight before we get home and Uncle James will have my skin and yours, too!” He turned and headed down the path toward Connorsville.
Francie went past him, stamping her feet with each step. “ ‘Go down and take a look,’ ” she mumbled. “How can I get to St. Joseph to take a look? Should I just tell my father I’m taking the stage tomorrow? Do you think he’ll let me borrow his horse?” She grunted. “Not likely.”
Charlie chuckled. “Well, you’ll just have to take my word for it, then,” he said.
Francie turned to him. “Do I have your word you won’t tell anyone about the tree?”
They walked on in silence for a moment. “I reckon,” Charlie answered finally. “But as soon as anyone gets wind of it, I’m going to be sure I’m on the team to bring it down. That’ll be something to tell my grandchildren about.”
Francie looked back. Charlie’s head was up and his eyes were shining in the dim light. Lewis Granger would cut down the tree for the money the lumber might bring. But Charlie would do it for the glory. She bit her lip and looked away. Money and glory. How was she ever going to stop them?