I love you a heap, and I'd be
happy anywhere with you. And I'm really and truly at home in the
wilderness. Only--only sometimes I have a funny feeling; as if I were
afraid. It seems silly, but this is all so different from our little
cabin. I look up at these big mountains, and they seem to be
scowling--as if we were trespassers or something."
"I know." Bill drew her close to him. "But that's just mood. I've
felt that same sensation up here--a foolish, indefinable foreboding.
All the out-of-the-way places of the earth produce that effect, if one
is at all imaginative. It's the bigness of everything, and the eternal
stillness. I've caught myself listening--when I knew there was nothing
to hear. Makes a fellow feel like a small boy left by himself in some
big, gloomy building--awesome. Sure, I know it. It would be hard on
the nerves to live here always. But we're only after a stake--then all
the pleasant places of the earth are open to us; with that little, old
log house up by Pine River for a refuge whenever we get tired of the
world at large. Cuddle up and go to sleep. You're a dead-game sport,
or you'd have hollered long ago."
And, next day, to Hazel, sitting by watching him swing the heavy,
double-bitted ax on the foundation logs of their winter home, it all
seemed foolish, that heaviness of heart which sometimes assailed her.
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