When Bill judged that the supply reached twenty tons,
he built a rude sled with a rack on it, and hauled in the hay with a
saddle horse.
"Amen!" said Bill, when he had emptied the rack for the last time, and
the hay rose in a neat stack. "That's another load off my mind. I can
build a cabin and a stable in six feet of snow if I have to, but there
would have been a slim chance of haying once a storm hit us. And the
caballos need a grubstake for the winter worse than we do, because they
can't eat meat. _We_ wouldn't go hungry--there's moose enough to feed
an army ranging in that low ground to the south."
"There's everything that one needs, almost, in the wilderness, isn't
there?" Hazel observed reflectively. "But still the law of life is
awfully harsh, don't you think, Bill? Isolation is a terrible thing
when it is so absolutely complete. Suppose something went wrong?
There's no help, and no mercy--absolutely none. You could die here by
inches and the woods and mountains would look calmly on, just as they
have looked on everything for thousands of years. It's like prison
regulations. You _must_ do this, and you _must_ do that, and there's
no excuse for mistakes.
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