The Trees by Conrad Richter Page A

the bound boy called.
    But Genny did not stop. She could hear someone running after. She looked back over her shoulder. The bound boy was coming fast as his feet could take him. She let her slim legs go.
    Sometimes when she was out alone in the woods, she ran for pleasure. But never could she go like when a body chased her, if it was only the young ones. Something came in her thin white legs then and she didn’t know any more she had any. She didn’t need to try to run. An easy powerbuoyed her up like the wind and she felt she could sail off like a red bird if she wanted to.
    Once when they were back in Pennsylvania, she dreamed she could fly. She hadn’t any wings. She just held out her arms and floated from one mountain to another. The valley between had a square log house, a round log barn and redtop meadows. She flew over those meadows so close, the redtop waved in a breeze. The folks came out of that house to watch her. She could still feel how light her body was. Her bones felt hollow as a turkey’s wing.
    Today she ran till it felt good to walk, but she wasn’t tired. The forest mould gave soft and springy under foot. Around her stood the thousand pillars of the woods, bidding her come on. The butts of the red oaks were coated with green but the moss would have nothing to do with the black oaks. Down by a run a young doe lifted its head and stared at her with eyes it was a shame to think a corbie would pick out some day. It had been drinking and the drops of water rained from its mouth. Back somewhere behind Genny the young ones yelled and the doe was off. It went through the trees in great effortless jumps, cut a half circle and when it came back to the ravine the run was in, it sailed over like a pheasant.
    Genny could hear the bound boy calling to her now. It came over her she was a deer, too. Thebound boy was hunting her like men always hunted women and wild things. Never would they let them be to live their own lives. No, men always came after, smelling and tracking them down. But the bound boy would never find her. She was a young doe. A delicious wildness came up in her. The woods looked different now. The trees and bushes, even the poison sumach, were friendly. They stood over and bent down at her and tried to hide her. You had to be a deer to know how the wild things felt when a man was after you.
    A stick cracked close under the bound boy’s foot and she was off like the doe. Her hair floated brown and soft behind her. Every deer she knew had its secret places where it slept out by day. She would go to her place now. Even Sayward didn’t know where she hid herself when things around the cabin got too much to stand. She made a wide circle to throw the bound boy off the track. Then she headed for the river and something pure came into her face. This was a holy place. She had found it herself and never would she show it to any but her true love when he came.
    First she tramped through a forest meadow of low fern that brushed soft as lace against her feet and legs. Then she came to a dark clump of pines. It hadn’t many pines in this Northwest Territory and mostly they stood alone. But here in this spot they crowded everything else out like the hemlocksalong a Pennsylvania stream. Always when she got this far, Genny kept her eyes religiously down. Would it mean as much to her as last time, she asked herself. Then when she raised her eyes she’d know this place would never fail her. It was dim with a kind of pine woods night and yet out there beyond the dark, scaly butts and branches the blinding sunlight came down, turning a ferny bank to golden, tender green and sparkling on the river with silver. Out there lay a new world. It was like something to come in her own life some day, something bright and shining on ahead.
    She listened. All sound of pursuit had gone. She was alone in her secret bower. It had been warm running. The sweat seemed to stand over her body in fine beads. With a deft motion she