Part 8 (1/2)
”You are so scornful about the other men, now you have chosen one!”
Christine's face turned red.
”Why, Chrissy! You would not compare your brother to those men! Papa, I beg your pardon; this is only for argument.”
”I don't compare him; but that's not to say all the other men are chaff!” Christine joined constrainedly in the laugh that followed her speech.
”You need not go fancying things, Moya,” she cried, in answer to a quizzical look. ”As if I hadn't known the Bowen boys since I was so high!”
”You might know them from the cradle to the grave, my dear young lady, and not know them as Paul will, after a week in the woods with them.”
The colonel had missed the drift of the girls' discussion. He was considering, privately, whether he had not better send a special messenger on the young men's trail. His a.s.surances to the women left a wide margin for personal doubt as to the prudence of the trip. Aside from the lateness of the start, it was, undoubtedly, an ill-a.s.sorted company for the woods. There was a wide margin also for suspense, as all mail facilities ceased at Challis.
VIII
A HUNTER'S DIARY
Early in November, about a week before the hunters were expected home, a packet came addressed to Moya. It was a journal letter from Paul, mailed by some returning prospector chance encountered in the forest as the party were going in. Moya read it aloud, with asterisks, to a family audience which did not include her father.
”To-day,” one of the first entries read, ”we halt at Twelve-Mile Cabin, the last roof we shall sleep under. There are pine-trees near the cabin cut off fifteen feet above the ground, felled in winter, John tells us, _at the level of the snow!_
”These cabins are all deserted now; the tide of prospecting has turned another way. The great hills that crowd one another up against the sky are so infested and overridden by this enormous forest-growth, and the underbrush is so dense, it would be impossible for a 'tenderfoot' to gain any clear idea of his direction. I should be a lost man the moment I ventured out of call. Woodcraft must be a sixth sense which we lost with the rest of our Eden birthright when we strayed from innocence, when we ceased to sleep with one ear on the ground, and to spell our way by the moss on tree-trunks. In these solitudes, as we call them, ranks and clouds of witnesses rise up to prove us deaf and blind. Busy couriers are pa.s.sing every moment of the day; and we do not see, nor hear, nor understand. We are the stocks and stones. Packer John is our only wood-sharp;--yet the last half of the name doesn't altogether fit him. He is a one-sided character, handicapped, I should say, by some experience that has humbled and perplexed him. Two and two perhaps refused to make four in his account with men, and he gave up the proposition. And now he consorts with trees, and hunts to live, not to kill. He has an impersonal, out-door odor about him, such as the cleanest animals have. I would as soon eat out of his dry, hard, cool hand, as from a chunk of pine-bark.
”It is amusing to see him with a certain member of the party who tries to be fresh with him. He has a disconcerting eye when he fixes it on a man, or turns it away from one who has said a coa.r.s.e or a foolish thing.
”'The jungle is large,' he seems to say, 'and the cub he is small. Let him think and be still!'”
”Who is this 'certain member' who tries to be 'fresh'?” Christine inquired with perceptible warmth.
”The cook, perhaps,” said Moya prudently.
”The cook isn't a 'member'!--Well, can't you go on, Moya? Paul seems to need a lot of editing.” Moya had paused and was glancing ahead, smiling to herself constrainedly.
”Is there more disparagement of his comrades?” Christine persisted.
”Christine, be still!” Mrs. Bogardus interfered. ”Moya ought to have the first reading of her own letter. It's very good of her to let us hear it at all.”
”Oh dear, there's no disparagement. Quite the contrary! I'll go on with pleasure if you don't mind.” Moya read hurriedly, laughing through her words:--
”'If you were here, (Ah, _if_ you were here!) You should lend me an ear--One at the least Of a pair the prettiest'--which is, within a foot or two, the rhythm of 'Wood Notes.' Of course you don't know it!”
”This is a gibe at me,” Moya explained, ”because I don't read Emerson.
'It is the very measure of a marching chorus,' he goes on to say, 'where the step is broken by rocks and tree-roots;'--and he is chanting it to himself (to her it was in the original) as they go in single file through these 'haughty solitudes, the twilight of the G.o.ds!'”
”'Haughty solitudes'!” Christine derided.
Mrs. Bogardus sighed with impatience, and Moya's face became set. ”Well, here he quotes again,” she haughtily resumed. ”Anybody who is tired of this can be excused. Emerson won't mind, and I'm sure Paul won't!” She looked a mute apology to Paul's mother, who smiled and said, ”Go on, dear. I don't read Emerson either, but I like him when Paul reads him for me.”
”Well, I warn you there is an awful lot of him here!” Moya's voice was a trifle husky as she read on.