Part 48 (2/2)

Barbara's eyes sparkled. She touched the cloth with gentle fingers and stroked it.

”It's lovely! What are you going to do with it?”

”Housewives need house dresses, darling.”

”But, Mother you've several now.”

Emma laughed. ”It's you I'm thinking of. You didn't suppose I was going to let you come all the way to Oregon to languish in a cabin, did you? I bought this from Lester Tenney two days before we left.”

”Mother!” To Barbara every evidence that she would some day actually be married to Ellis had a kind of magic in it, and she touched the cloth again, a benediction. Life was full of the most beautiful promise. Even the small threat that Hugo Gearey might come again to plague her had been dispelled by news of his transfer. The future held no blemish.

Knife on one side of his belt, hatchet on the other, Tad came into the cabin. He looked at Barbara with a smile that was half a leer, and Emma knitted vexed brows. Tad seemed to derive a vast amus.e.m.e.nt from Barbara's and Ellis's engagement, but what Emma did not know was that, one evening when they thought they were alone, Tad had happened on Ellis kissing his sister. He hadn't made his presence known, he had slipped away as quietly as he came, and he had never told anyone. Why any man should kiss a girl at all was beyond his comprehension. Why Ellis, to whom Tad had looked up but who had since fallen several notches in Tad's estimation, should bother kissing Barbara, was a complete mystery. But it was a hilarious mystery and one that had furnished Tad no end of private amus.e.m.e.nt.

”Hi,” he said.

Emma said, ”Tad! How many times must I tell you to wipe the mud from your shoes before you come in?”

”Oh, yeah.” Tad looked down at his muddy boots. ”Well, I was goin' right out again anyhow.”

He scooted out the door and Emma sighed, ”That boy can't sit still a minute!”

She went to the door to see where he had gone but he was already out of sight. The younger children, supervised by little Joe, were building a house from stray pieces of wood that they picked up in the yard. Emma looked down to where Joe worked, and for a moment her eyes dwelt warmly on him.

She went back inside to cut the patterns for Barbara's house dresses.

Joe, Ellis and Jim Snedeker, were notching the logs that Joe and Ellis had cut and brought in. An old man, Snedeker was by no means feeble.

Though not as active as either Joe or Ellis, he had used an ax for more years than Joe was old and he made up in skill what he lacked in agility. Though Joe was the best ax man of the trio, Snedeker notched almost as many logs as Ellis.

Joe worked willingly, happily, for this was work he liked. But within him was again a mighty restlessness and he kept his face turned to the south wind. Every tiny variation in it became almost a personal issue, for they had set out from Missouri to build a new life in Oregon and nothing must interfere. When the snow melted gra.s.s would grow, and the snow would melt if the south wind blew. As soon as there was enough gra.s.s they could be on their way.

Near where they were working, a group of quaking aspens, their trunks and branches already colored with spring's green hue, trembled in the wind. A hare hopped among them, crouched at the base of a tree and sat perfectly still. A happy canine grin on his face, ears p.r.i.c.ked up, Mike ran through the soggy snow to give chase and the two disappeared.

Snedeker rested his ax on a log.

”Wish I'd kep' count of the piddlin' little critters that dog of your'n has took after, Joe. He has done naught else sinst you fetched him here.”

”He's been chasing them all the way from Missouri,” Joe said. ”The darn dog's probably run far enough to get him to Oregon and back six times over. But he hasn't caught anything yet.”

”That don't stop his tryin',” Snedeker grunted. ”Puts me in mind of a trapper I knowed. He ketched more beaver'n anybody elst, an' when n.o.body in the hul show could find buffalo, he could. But what he wanted was a white b'ar. The place was thick with 'em, but his medicine wasn't right for white b'ar. Ever'body elst run on 'em, but not Piegan Kelley. Got so he'd rush through his traps, skin out his pelts, an' rush off to find a white b'ar. Finally he found one. B'ar found him the same time. When I come up the b'ar was layin' dead as a stone an' Piegan was almost so.

But he was grinnin' like a coyote that just ketched an antelope kid.

'Got my b'ar,' says he to me, I can die happy now.' He did, too. That's the way 'twill be with your dog.”

The aspen branches rattled more violently. Joe looked toward them.

<script>