Paisley shook his head decisively.
“No good,” he said firmly, “you can’t go; that’s all.”
“Bill,” said Boy, “I’ve give my promise that I won’t hurt Simpson, won’t that let me go?”
“Nor anybody else?”
“Nor anybody else.”
“Well, I guess that will let you go,” chuckled Bill. “I guess it will. Fact is, you’re the one ought to go. You’re worth all the others put together at scoutin’. Here you, Lapier, come back here. Boy’s goin’ along in your place. Your wife’s kickin’ like everythin’ on your goin’, so you stay here.”
Boy stepped forward and looked into the inner room. On the floor here and there, on furs, lay chubby-faced babies, sleeping sweetly, and on fur shake-downs close beside them the mothers of Bushwhackers’ Place lay sleeping and dreaming perhaps of olden days in the retreat, before troubles came to cloud its tranquil skies. He tiptoed across the room and stood beside two sleepers in the shadow. His mother’s arm encircled the neck of the girl who had let happiness into his heart. He removed his cap and kneeling kissed the mother’s cheek tenderly, then reverently he touched the girl’s brow with his lips, and slipped away. And through the faint light a pair of wide-open eyes, mellow with God’s earthly happiness, followed him. Boy found his waiting companions outside, and, slapping Declute’s narrow shoulders, he bounded down the path toward the creek.
All the world was waking up to spring. The woody doty smells of the Wild crept into his life and stirred his pulse to the symphony of his world. His whole being responded to the waking-time and his kingdom was still his—aye, more than his kingdom was now his. Above his head, a gray streak against the smoky fog, a flock of home-nesting ducks fluttered lazily by. They were flying low and the leader’s soft quack sounded to him like a greeting from friends long absent. The creek, washed of its snow, lay still ice-fast, but clear and milk-blue with the tinge of wakefulness upon its face. By night the ice would be broken and the current would bear it, grinding and joyful, out to the open water of the bay, and by and by into the clear waters of the lake. A lone grouse strummed his joy upon a log hidden in a thicket. Down in the fallow a cock-quail was whistling “Bob-White.” Across the creek the heavy snows of winter had carried the flimsy roof of Hallibut’s mill to the bank. It lay where the current would sweep it out into the open water. The schoolhouse, through the fog, loomed up totteringly, seeming to bend as though imploring the creek to carry it away from the place from which it was estranged.
“Think the ice strong enough to bear us?” queried Declute. “It’s some worn, ain’t it?”
“It’s strong enough,” Boy answered. “We’ll drag the canoes across. This ice’ll be gone by night.”