Leaning over, he gently kissed her cheek. A few hours before they had made love for the first time in months. With her arthritis and his failing lungs it was often a painful effort and they rarely made it anymore. But this had been special, filled with the kind of sweetness they had known years before. Afterward they had lain snuggled close together talking about their youth and laughing softly.

Rippling shadows from the old glass panes moved over the walls. Touching her hair, he kissed her a second time. She stirred, and smiling in her sleep turned on her side, snoring lightly.

The rustling sounded again.

Easing himself from bed, the floor cool against his feet, he crossed to the window. Looking out at the night, the field bathed in moonlight, he thought he saw a large dark shadow speed around the garden and head for the woods.

Humming to himself, barely realizing the tune was "Fire on the Mountain," Gobe slipped into a white shirt and clean overalls, pulled on his socks, tied the laces of his heavy brogans and walked into the kitchen.

He found a beer in the ice-box and sipped on it as he folded the plastic red and white checkered tablecloth and put it in the back pocket of his overalls. Taking his fiddle from its peg on the wall of the living room, he walked out to the porch and sat, drawing the bow quietly across the strings. The top one was sour. Adjusting the tuning pegs, he played music as soft as the singing of crickets in the moonbathed fields.

Clouds crossed in front of the moon, their shadows skittering over the land, disappearing as they came to the woods.

That must be what I saw, he thought, watching them. It must have been shadows from the moon. After all, what else could it have been? He didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed.

The music felt good. It always did. The fiddle never changed. However much his lungs might hurt, the fiddle was always there. Music was always there. He might not dance anymore, but others still danced when Gobe Rightly fiddled. Work was pretty much gone. Even lifting a hoe in the tobacco patch could make him double over from pain. Lovemaking with Emily was rare. But he made music every day, the air of his bow blowing over the earth of his fiddle, rising above the land on Dutch Creek where Rightlys had been making music since they first came into this country.

He rose, stepping off the porch. Dewy grass caught the moonlight, looking like bright blades of glass sparkling beneath his feet as he walked across the lawn and into the field toward the distant tree line, the fiddle tucked against his chest as he played tunes older than any words he might use to name them.

Halfway to the woods, a cloud passed over the moon. He stood in its shadow, fiddling until it was gone and moonlight once again sparkled on the grass. Then he continued toward the darkened tree line, beyond which ancient Indian trails led to places he'd been many times and knew well, and to one place he'd never been.

Reaching the end of the field, he stood fiddling and staring into the darkness. Night birds and crickets sang back, the soft movement of leaves in the woods accompanying his music. Then, from deep among the trees came the strange rustling. He stopped fiddling, straining to hear. The breeze had died and he knew it wasn't leaves or branches. It was something else.

Gently, he carefully wrapped the fiddle in the tablecloth and laid it on a tree stump. Emily or Brady would find it in the morning and understand. The rustling came again and Gobe stepped into the woods.

Moonlight filtered through the leaves making bright patches on the trail as he walked along a path among the trees. Even in the night he recognized the place where he crossed the line marking the end of Rightly land. Just ahead the trail forked, the right leading west to Tennessee, toward Roan Mountain, the left veering south and east toward Hickory.

He went to the right. Whatever had been rustling as he stood fiddling at the tree line, was gone. It wasn't as though it had grown quiet, waiting, watching as he moved. It was gone. He knew it as surely as he knew he was walking out into the woods, deep woods, dark woods. It had gone ahead, toward an obscure and grassy trail, moving sveltely through the saplings growing along its center. In a few more years they would be full grown trees, their heavy roots swelling the earth and hiding forever a trail which should never be hidden.

Brady would not find it. His children, should he have any, would not even know it had existed. Gobe sighed, pain shooting through his chest. There was nothing more he could do for Brady. He'd given him the music. That would have to be enough.

Perhaps the Martin boys would be good neighbors. They loved the music, even if they did play it on guitars. Brady could teach them the tunes. That way something of the old music would remain on Dutch Creek, beyond the road, beyond the falls, up on the Rightly land where it had been played for generations.

He came to a creek, foam around the rocks white in the moonlight. Stooping down, he cupped the cold water in his hands and drank. It was sweet and flowed down his throat. He stooped for a second drink, then a third.

The trail followed the creek for a mile before turning sharply away and leading up a long steep hill. Gobe's lungs burned, his chest in agony as he climbed. It had been years since he walked any of these old trails. He was glad he didn't have much farther to go.

At the crest of the hill he stopped. Holding his chest against the pain of breathing, he watched shadows drifting across the moonlit tiers of mountains. Surely there was never a more beautiful land, great mountains and steep valleys carved by rushing creeks, meadows where sheep and cattle grazed, soft hollers where homesteads weathered the Appalachian seasons, where men and women still made the old timey music and told the old timey stories.

Everything here had once seemed eternal. He hoped the Martin boys wouldn't bring electric guitars to Dutch Creek.

He started downhill. Fifteen minutes later he stood at the ancient trail head, its grassy cover and sapling growth visible in the spots of moonlight coming through the trees. Leaning over, he gathered a handful of dirt from the Roan Mountain trail, letting it sift through his fingers and fall to the ground, pebbles and small clods of earth bouncing from the tops of his shoes. He wiped the remains on his overalls before stepping onto the obscure path.

As his feet brushed the dewy grass he thought he heard music in the distance, a band of fiddles playing "Fire on the Mountain," and softly, at a far greater distance, the sounds of drums and chanting. He stood, straining to listen as it faded and was gone. Imagination, he thought. Smiling at himself, he walked down the path.

He did not see the smooth shadowy figures weaving among the trees on either side of the path. Following his movement with bright yellow eyes, they leapt with joy at his progress, as if welcoming the arrival of an old friend.