THE SHEPHERD OF THE HILLS
pose. Ain't nothin' to a flat country nohow. A man jest naturally wear hisself plumb out a walkin' on a level 'thout ary down hill t' spell him. An' then look how much more there is of hit I Take forty acres o' flat now an' hit's jest a forty, but you take forty acres o' this here Ozark country an' God 'lmighty only knows how much 'twould be if hit war rolled out flat. 'Taint no wonder 't all, God rested when he made these here hills; he jest naturally had t' quit, fer he done his beatenest an' war plumb gin out."
Of all the country Bill had seen, "from Ant Creek Head t' the mouth of James an' plumb to Pilot Knob," he "’'lowed the Mutton Hollow neighborhood was the prettiest."
From the Matthews place on the ridge that shuts in the valley on the north and east, there is an Old Trail leading down the mountain. Two hundred yards below the log barn, the narrow path finds a bench on the steep slope of the hillside, and, at that level, follows around the rim of the Hollow. Dipping a little at the head of the ravine east of the spring, then lifting itself over a low, heavily timbered spur of one of the higher hills, it comes out again into the open. Following a rocky ledge, the way, farther on, leads through a clump of sumac bushes, and past the deer lick in the big low gaps, then around the base of Boulder Bald, along another ledge, and out
16
