author - "Emerson Hough"
the oldest and best minds of this country havefelt--"
"At least those minds were shrewd in choosing their agent," sherejoined. "Yes; you are fanatic, that is plain. You will obeyorders. And you have not been much used to women. That makes itharder for me. Or easier!" She smiled at him again, very blithefor a prisoner.
"It ought to have been held down to that," he began disconsolately,"I should have been all along professional only. It began wellwhen you gave me your parole, so that I need not sit nodding andblinking, over against you also nodding and blinking all nightlong. Had you been silly, as many women would have been, you couldnot this morning be so fresh and brilliant--even though you tell meyou have not slept, which seems to me incredible. I myself sleptlike a boy, confident in your word. Now, you have banished sleep!Nodding and blinking, I must henceforth watch you, nodding--andblinking, unhappy, uncomfortable; whereas, were it in my power, Iwould never have you know th
not such as growed in Wyoming.
Now, Old Man Wright and me, us two, had brought up the kid. Me being foreman, that was part of my business too. We been busy. I could see we was going to be a lot busier. Before long something was due to pop. At last the old man comes to me once more.
"Curly," says he, "I was in hopes something would happen, so that this range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year. They've offered me more money than there is in the whole wide world. They say now that for the brand and the range stock and the home ranch, and all the hay lands and ditches that we put in so long ago, they'll give me three million eight hundred thousand dollars, a third of it in real money and the rest secured on the place. What do you think of that?"
"I think s
ew of all the village might have been statues for the time, so motionless, so tense was each.
Not many actually heard the words of old Eph Adamson--words wrung out of the bitterness of his own soul perhaps, but words intolerable none the less. None had heard the words of Aurora Lane and the young man as they had spoken previous to this. None guessed who the stranger was or might be--none but drunken Eph Adamson. But all could see what now happened.
For one instant the young man stood almost like a statue. Then with one sudden thrust of his fist he smote the old man full in the mouth, so swift and hard a blow that Adamson dropped prostrate, and for the time motionless.
A sudden, instantaneous, electric buzz, a murmur, ran all around the square. A sound of shuffling feet and falling boxes might have been heard as men here and there rose eagerly, their necks craned out toward this swiftly made arena.
They saw the half-wit boy now advance upon Don Lane with a roar or bawl of rage, his
ture excited more than half my admiration, and all my love.
Walpurgis on the ceiling, gray coming on in the embers, symptoms of death in the candle, a blotch of tallow on the Shakespeare, and the coat not half done. It must have been about then, I think, that the thin-edged sweetness of the Singing Mouse's voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the little thing, sat prizing it more and more, as more and more its voice swept, and swelled, and rang; rang, till the fire burst high in noble pyramids of flame; rang, till the candle flashed in a thousand crystals; swell
of the recent laughter of his companions at his eagerness.
"Well, that's hard to say," replied his elder relative. "I'd like to start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you'd see pretty much every breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows."
"What's that got to do with it?" asked John.
"Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I'll show you the man who first went through--an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on thos
sioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.
[Illustration: "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19]
You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted to see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the geyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.
For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hat
out of their folded sweaters. Soon they were helping Moise with his cooking at the fire and enjoying as usual their evening conversation with that cheerful friend.
It did not take Moise, old-timer as he was, very long to get his bannocks and tea ready, and to fry the whitefish and grouse which the boys now brought to him.
Uncle Dick looked at his watch after a time. "Forty minutes," said he.
"For what?" demanded Jesse.
"Well, it took us forty minutes to get off the packs and hobble the horses and get supper ready. That's too long--we ought to have it all done and supper over in that time. We'll have to do better than this when we get fully on the trail."
"What's the use in being in such a hurry?" demanded John, who was watching the frying-pan very closely.
"It's always a good thing to get the camp work done quickly mornings and evenings," replied the leader of the party. "We've got a long trip ahead, and I'd like to average twenty-five miles a day for a while, if I co
oduction, the multifold--all this was written under that skywhich now swept, deep and blue, flecked here and there with soft andfleecy clouds, over these fruitful acres hewn from the primevalforest.
The forest, the deep, vast forest of oak and ash and gum and ghostlysycamore; the forest, tangled with a thousand binding vines andbriers, wattled and laced with rank blue cane--sure proof of a soilexhaustlessly rich--this ancient forest still stood, mysterious andforbidding, all about the edges of the great plantation. Here andthere a tall white stump, fire-blackened at its foot, stood, even infields long cultivated, showing how laborious and slow had been thewhittling away of this jungle, which even now continually encroachedand claimed its own. The rim of the woods, marked white by thedeadened trees where the axes of the laborers were reclaiming yetother acres as the years rolled by, now showed in the morning sundistinctly, making a frame for the rich and restful picture of theBig House and it
she said, and withdrew her hands from his shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the gold-flecked slope before them. "Go on, you are a man. I know you will not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will not turn--because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die."
"You give me no long shrift, mother?" said the youth, with a twinkle in his eye.
"How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son's future--if she dares to read it. She knows--she knows!"
There was a long silence; then the widow continued.
"Listen, Merne," she said. "You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now I could n
Sir Alexander's record, you know--he made it from here in six days!"
"I don't remember that book very well," said Jesse; "I'll read it again some time."
"We'll all read it each day as we go on, and in that way understand it better when we get through," ventured John. "But listen; I thought I heard them in the bush."
It was as he had said. The swish of bushes parting and the occasional sound of a stumbling footfall on the trail now became plainer. They heard the voice of Moise break out into a little song as he saw the light of the fire flickering among the trees. He laughed gaily as he stepped into the ring of the cleared ground, let down one end of the canoe which he was carrying, and with a quick twist of his body set it down gently upon the leaves.
"You'll mak' good time, hein?" he asked of the boys, smiling and showing a double row of white teeth.
"What did I tell you, boys?" demanded Rob. "Here they are, and it isn't quite dark yet."
The next moment Ale
the oldest and best minds of this country havefelt--"
"At least those minds were shrewd in choosing their agent," sherejoined. "Yes; you are fanatic, that is plain. You will obeyorders. And you have not been much used to women. That makes itharder for me. Or easier!" She smiled at him again, very blithefor a prisoner.
"It ought to have been held down to that," he began disconsolately,"I should have been all along professional only. It began wellwhen you gave me your parole, so that I need not sit nodding andblinking, over against you also nodding and blinking all nightlong. Had you been silly, as many women would have been, you couldnot this morning be so fresh and brilliant--even though you tell meyou have not slept, which seems to me incredible. I myself sleptlike a boy, confident in your word. Now, you have banished sleep!Nodding and blinking, I must henceforth watch you, nodding--andblinking, unhappy, uncomfortable; whereas, were it in my power, Iwould never have you know th
not such as growed in Wyoming.
Now, Old Man Wright and me, us two, had brought up the kid. Me being foreman, that was part of my business too. We been busy. I could see we was going to be a lot busier. Before long something was due to pop. At last the old man comes to me once more.
"Curly," says he, "I was in hopes something would happen, so that this range of ours wouldn't be no temptation to them irrigation colonizers; I was hoping something would happen to them, so they would lose their money. But they lost their minds instead. These last four years they raised their bid on the Circle Arrow a half million dollars every year. They've offered me more money than there is in the whole wide world. They say now that for the brand and the range stock and the home ranch, and all the hay lands and ditches that we put in so long ago, they'll give me three million eight hundred thousand dollars, a third of it in real money and the rest secured on the place. What do you think of that?"
"I think s
ew of all the village might have been statues for the time, so motionless, so tense was each.
Not many actually heard the words of old Eph Adamson--words wrung out of the bitterness of his own soul perhaps, but words intolerable none the less. None had heard the words of Aurora Lane and the young man as they had spoken previous to this. None guessed who the stranger was or might be--none but drunken Eph Adamson. But all could see what now happened.
For one instant the young man stood almost like a statue. Then with one sudden thrust of his fist he smote the old man full in the mouth, so swift and hard a blow that Adamson dropped prostrate, and for the time motionless.
A sudden, instantaneous, electric buzz, a murmur, ran all around the square. A sound of shuffling feet and falling boxes might have been heard as men here and there rose eagerly, their necks craned out toward this swiftly made arena.
They saw the half-wit boy now advance upon Don Lane with a roar or bawl of rage, his
ture excited more than half my admiration, and all my love.
Walpurgis on the ceiling, gray coming on in the embers, symptoms of death in the candle, a blotch of tallow on the Shakespeare, and the coat not half done. It must have been about then, I think, that the thin-edged sweetness of the Singing Mouse's voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature came and sat on my knee, and in its affectionate way began to nibble at my finger-tips. It sat erect, its thin paws waving with a tiny, measured swing, and in its mystic voice, so infinitely small, so sweet and yet so majestically strong, began a song which no pen can transcribe. Knowing that the awakening must come, but unwilling to lose a moment of the dream, I, who with one finger could have crushed the little thing, sat prizing it more and more, as more and more its voice swept, and swelled, and rang; rang, till the fire burst high in noble pyramids of flame; rang, till the candle flashed in a thousand crystals; swell
of the recent laughter of his companions at his eagerness.
"Well, that's hard to say," replied his elder relative. "I'd like to start to-morrow morning. It all depends on the stage of the water. If a flood came down the Athabasca to-morrow you'd see pretty much every breed in that saloon over there stop drinking and hurry to the scows."
"What's that got to do with it?" asked John.
"Well, when the river goes up the scows can run the Grand Rapids, down below here, without unloading, or at least without unloading everything. If the river is low so that the rocks stand out, the men have to portage every pound of the brigade stuff. The Grand Rapids are bad, let me tell you that! It is only within the last fifty years that any one has ever tried to run them. I'll show you the man who first went through--an old man now over seventy; but he was a young chap when he first tried it. Well, he found that he could get through, so he tried it over again. He and others have been guiding on thos
sioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.
[Illustration: "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19]
You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted to see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the geyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.
For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hat
out of their folded sweaters. Soon they were helping Moise with his cooking at the fire and enjoying as usual their evening conversation with that cheerful friend.
It did not take Moise, old-timer as he was, very long to get his bannocks and tea ready, and to fry the whitefish and grouse which the boys now brought to him.
Uncle Dick looked at his watch after a time. "Forty minutes," said he.
"For what?" demanded Jesse.
"Well, it took us forty minutes to get off the packs and hobble the horses and get supper ready. That's too long--we ought to have it all done and supper over in that time. We'll have to do better than this when we get fully on the trail."
"What's the use in being in such a hurry?" demanded John, who was watching the frying-pan very closely.
"It's always a good thing to get the camp work done quickly mornings and evenings," replied the leader of the party. "We've got a long trip ahead, and I'd like to average twenty-five miles a day for a while, if I co
oduction, the multifold--all this was written under that skywhich now swept, deep and blue, flecked here and there with soft andfleecy clouds, over these fruitful acres hewn from the primevalforest.
The forest, the deep, vast forest of oak and ash and gum and ghostlysycamore; the forest, tangled with a thousand binding vines andbriers, wattled and laced with rank blue cane--sure proof of a soilexhaustlessly rich--this ancient forest still stood, mysterious andforbidding, all about the edges of the great plantation. Here andthere a tall white stump, fire-blackened at its foot, stood, even infields long cultivated, showing how laborious and slow had been thewhittling away of this jungle, which even now continually encroachedand claimed its own. The rim of the woods, marked white by thedeadened trees where the axes of the laborers were reclaiming yetother acres as the years rolled by, now showed in the morning sundistinctly, making a frame for the rich and restful picture of theBig House and it
she said, and withdrew her hands from his shoulders. The faces of both were now gazing straight on over the gold-flecked slope before them. "Go on, you are a man. I know you will not turn back from what you undertake. You will not change, you will not turn--because you cannot. You were born to earn and not to own; to find, but not to possess. But as you have lived, so you will die."
"You give me no long shrift, mother?" said the youth, with a twinkle in his eye.
"How can I? I can only tell you what is in the book of life. Do I not know? A mother always loves her son; so it takes all her courage to face what she knows will be his lot. Any mother can read her son's future--if she dares to read it. She knows--she knows!"
There was a long silence; then the widow continued.
"Listen, Merne," she said. "You call me a prophetess of evil. I am not that. Do you think I speak only in despair, my boy? No, there is something larger than mere happiness. Listen, and believe me, for now I could n
Sir Alexander's record, you know--he made it from here in six days!"
"I don't remember that book very well," said Jesse; "I'll read it again some time."
"We'll all read it each day as we go on, and in that way understand it better when we get through," ventured John. "But listen; I thought I heard them in the bush."
It was as he had said. The swish of bushes parting and the occasional sound of a stumbling footfall on the trail now became plainer. They heard the voice of Moise break out into a little song as he saw the light of the fire flickering among the trees. He laughed gaily as he stepped into the ring of the cleared ground, let down one end of the canoe which he was carrying, and with a quick twist of his body set it down gently upon the leaves.
"You'll mak' good time, hein?" he asked of the boys, smiling and showing a double row of white teeth.
"What did I tell you, boys?" demanded Rob. "Here they are, and it isn't quite dark yet."
The next moment Ale