Two years after the return to Cedar Mountain, late in the day, designedly late, two horses might have been seen ascending the crooked trail through the cedars that mantled the mountain. Familiar forms were these that rode. They had often taken this path before. The first was the Preacher; the second, the woman that had held his hand. But in her arms was another—the baby form of their first-born. This was their first long ride together since he came, this was the elected trail; and, as the big, red sun went down in the purple and gold of his curtains, Jim took the baby and led the way up the last rough trail, to the little upland, right to the Spirit Rock. The red symbols of the Indians had been recently renewed; in a crevice was a shred of tobacco wrapped in red-dyed grass. It was still a holy place, accounted so by those who knew it.
From the bundle that he carried on his back, Jim took a handful of firewood, a canteen of water, and a church baptismal bowl. He filled the bowl and set it on the lowest ledge of the Spirit Rock. Before the rock he lighted a little fire and, when it blazed, he dropped into the flames the tobacco from the crevice. "That is what they wished done with it," he said in reverence. When the thread of smoke went up nearly straight into the sky—an emblem of true prayer that has ever been—he kneeled, and Belle beside him with the little one kneeled, and he prayed to the God of the Mountain for continued help and guidance and returned thanks for the little one whom they had brought that day to consecrate to Him.
Jim wished it. Belle willed it. His mother, he knew, would have had it so. There seemed no better place than this, the holiest place his heart had ever known. There was no better time than this, the evening calm, with all the symbols of His Presence in their glory.
Belle handed the infant to Jim, who sprinkled water on its face, baptizing it in the form of the Church, and then added: "I consecrate thee to God's service, and I name thee William in memory of the friend of my childhood, a man of wayward life, but one who helped to build whatever there is in me of strength, for he never was afraid, and he ever held his simple word as a bond that might not be broken."
THE END