Part 7 (1/2)
She noted how the future of men like these is not with the future of the country They were not to participate in the prosperity which their presence here ht foster While all the others looked forward they looked backward, or perhaps aside, as at a separate life Such is the part a garrison must always play She doubted if , she, too, ht
But De into the past as the tide of res of hootten; sorrows seared over by tih at last; resolutions failing midway, half-hearted; friends heretofore dead even toabout an old home, like the scent of roses when the fallen petals have left but the bare stalk; vanished joys, reviviscent with a new throb that was more like pain than pleasure And if he did not look to the future that sweet Deceht of Saint Martin's summer by the placid Tennessee River, perhaps it was as well,--oh, poor Captain Demere!
CHAPTER V
The next day ushered in a crisis in the affairs of the would-be stationers--the house-raising began All the athered to the fore, and the cabins--a substantial double-cabin the larger was, and the other, one rooic
The stockade, boles of stout young trees sawed off in lengths of twenty feet and sharply pointed at the upper end, the other end deeply sunken into the ground, began to grow apace The spring ithin the enclosure--a point of vast ier from the Indians it was not necessary to sally forth from the protection of the stockade for the indispensable water-supply for household and cattle The prospects ofin a period of coe, and ins and pails by the defenders of the stockade, who could have held out valiantly against the savage except for the ed this point upon the pioneers
”Of course in any eued, ”the forces at the fort would relieve you at once But the true hold An unfailing water-supply ought to be a definitely recognized necessity in every uerment Otherwise the station can be held only very tee, but drouth means death, for surrender is massacre”
Nevertheless, eastward at the time, and later in ard settlelected and the obvious disaster as often ensued
The woodland spring within the stockade was a char water till one antic tree were ht be descried a deep basin four feet in diameter filled ater, crystal, clear, and brown in the deep shadow--brown and liquid as the eyes of soreen laurel
And, oh joy! the day when Odalie kindled her own fire once ; when traversing the passage froate of the stockade at the silvery rushi+ng of the Tennessee in its broad expanse under the blue sky, giving, as it swirled around, a long perspective, down the straight and glea reach before it curved anew
And oh, the oods was unpacked and once more the familiar articles adjusted in their places, her flax wheel in the chie on the shelf; and often did she think about the little blue jug that came from France and marvel what had been its fate! All her linen that was saved, the pride of her heart, made, too, its brave show She had a white cloth on her table, albeit the table sees were of unequal length, and white counterpanes on her beds, and gay curtains at the s opening within the stockade--the other side had but loop-holes--on which birds of splendid plue, cut from East Indian chintz, had been overcast on the white dimity, and which looked when the wind stirred thelass and only a batten shutter, as if all the winged denizens of the brilliant tropics were seeking entrance to this happy bower; the rooestion because of the bark adhering to the logs of the walls, for the tih the daubing and the chinking were stout and close, and with the aid of the great flaring fires stood off Jack Frost with a very valiant bluff
So ht in small compass When the fire was a-flicker on a dull wintry afternoon, and the snohirl outside, and the tropical birds quite still on their shadowy perches against the closed batten shutters, Odalie, Haether and sit on the buffalo rug spread on the puncheon floor beside the hearth, and explore sundry horns of buffalo or elk in which rees of value had been coe--when the joyous exclanition of sundry treasured trifles whose utility had begun to be ht, ”and oh, my cake of wax!”
”And Lord!” exclaiht of that!”
”And your new ribbon; 'tis a very pretty piece,” and Odalie let the lustrous undulations catch the firelight as she reeled it out ”The best taffeta to tie up your queue”
[Illustration: ”And oh, the moment of housewifely pride!”]
”I don't intend to plait my hair in a queue any more,” Hamish declared contemptuously ”The men in this country,” he continued with a lofty air, ”have toohair and wearing a bobbing pig-tail at their ears” He shook his own dangling curls as he spoke
Fifine babbled out an assortment of words with many an ellipsis and many a breathy aspiration which even those accustoue could with difficulty interpret Both Odalie and Ha attentive eyes upon her, discerned at last the words to mean that Mr Gilfillan had no hair to plait At this Hamish looked blank for a moment and in consternation; Odalie exclaimed, ”Oh, oh!” but Fifine infinitely ad doubted him worthy of imitation
”I'll have none, but for a different reason I'll cut my lovely locks close with Odalie's shears as soon as she finds them,” Hamish declared
He did not dream that they were already found and bestowed in a safe nook in a crevice between the chinking where they would not be again discovered in a hurry, for he had earlier expressed his deter hair in ele men about the settlement
Odalie was too tactful to remonstrate ”And oh!” she exclaimed with a sort of ecstasy ”My pouncet-box! hoeet! _delicieux!_” She presented the gold filigree at the noses successively of Hamish and Fifine and the cat, all of whom sniffed in polite ecstasy, but Kitty suddenly wiped her nose with her paw several tian to wash her face
”My poppet! my poppet!” cried Fifine, ecstatically, as a quaint and tiny wooden doll of a soht was fished out She snuggled it up to her lips in rapture, then showed it to the cat, who evidently recognized it, and as it was danced seductively before her on the buffalo rug, put out her paw and with a delicate tentative gesture and intent broas about to play with it after her fashi+on of toying with a ht in a mesh of the doll's bobinet skirt Now the doll's finery, while limited in compass to minuteness, was very fine, and as Josephine's short shriek of indignation, ”_Quelle barbarie!_” arose on the air, the cat turned around carrying the splendidly arrayed poppet off on her unwilling claw--to be lost, who knehere, in the wilderness! The frantic little owner seized the tail of the _nant discordance; the ro cry, ”_Quelle barbarie!_”