Patches of earth steamed wherever a
hillside lay bare to the sun. From some mysterious distance a lone
crow winged his way, and, perching on a near-by tree-top, cawed raucous
greeting.
Hazel cleared away the breakfast things, and stood looking out the
kitchen window. Roaring Bill sat on a log, shirt-sleeved, smoking his
pipe. Presently he went over to the stable, led out his horses, and
gave them their liberty. For twenty minutes or so he stood watching
their mad capers as they ran and leaped and pranced back and forth over
the clearing. Then he walked off into the timber, his rifle over one
shoulder.
Hazel washed her dishes and went outside. The cabin sat on a benchlike
formation, a shoulder of the mountain behind, and she could look away
westward across miles and miles of timber, darkly green and merging
into purple in the distance. It was a beautiful land--and lonely. She
did not know why, but all at once a terrible feeling of utter
forlornness seized her. It was spring--and also it was spring in other
lands. The wilderness suddenly took on the characteristics of a
prison, in which she was sentenced to solitary confinement. She
rebelled against it, rebelled against her surroundings, against the
manner of her being there, against everything.
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