"Three that I know of."
"That's ours, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's ours: the old priests and explorers scattered the name round pretty thick in the old days."
"How far do you make it?"
"About a hundred miles, perhaps more!"
"Been a pilot to the priests and explorers for centuries?"
"I guess so, sir."
"Wayland, may it be so t' th' Nation, now! Y've got a wilderness an' a Red Sea an' a Dead Sea an' a devilish dirty lot o' travellin' to do on th' way t' y'r promised land; an' A'm thinkin', man, y've wasted a lot o' time on the trail worshippin' th' calf; an' God knows who is y'r Moses."
They camped that night among the evergreens with red fir branches for beds, the first beds they had known for seven weeks, with the needled end pointing in and the branch end out, "unless y' want t' sleep on stumps," the old preacher had admonished the bed maker. And during the night, the wind sprang up shaking all the pixie tambourines in the pines and the hemlocks, and setting the poplars and cottonwoods clapping their hands. A spurt of moisture hit the old man's face.
"Man alive, but is that rain?" he asked. Wayland laughed. "Only a drop from a broken pine needle; but rain would taste good, wouldn't it?"