The cabin was built half of logs, half of boards from the lumber mill. A huge stone chimney promised the warmth of an open fireplace within. Climbing vines fingered the walls of the structure. A spring above it was the source of a tiny stream that trickled across the dooryard and fed a mat of watercress. Henry had gooseberry bushes and currant bushes, and there was a pear and apple orchard of a dozen trees. The water from the spring eventually found its way into a man-made ditch, from which it seeped onto a small patch of frost-nipped alfalfa.
Henry’s dooryard was cluttered with every imaginable thing that had seen its day, from a grindstone whose three remaining legs sagged rheumatically beneath it to a hay rake with one wheel and a depleted set of teeth. There were pieces of rusty iron of all descriptions, old sets of hames, wagon wheels, joints of gaspipe of all sizes and lengths, lopped-over wagon seats, one of which had been hung as a swing, innumerable chains, sleds, broken pack-saddles, chicken coops upside-down, spewing mattresses, axles, an ancient dresser minus its mirror and resting placidly on its back, the iron-and-wood pedestal of an office swivel chair—and from every tree hung chains, frayed ropes, wagon-seat springs, iron hounds, countless horseshoes, more hames and other fragments of harness, and steel traps of every size. All these treasures, Henry confided to his guests, he had brought in, piece at a time, on the back of Lot’s Wife or his own sturdy shoulders, imagining that “sometime they might come in handy.” Often he had been obliged to dismember the larger pieces of junk—the hay rake, for example—and pack them in by sections. “Un Rincon Confusión,” Charmian promptly christened the place, which in Spanish is equivalent to “A Corner of Chaos.” Mary called it a whompus—which, she interpreted, was either a dish that she made of left-over boiled potatoes, bread crumbs, and sage, or a dog’s breakfast.
But the home was picturesque and quaint, and the smells of the virgin forest all about were sweet and bracing. The light mountain air hinted at frost. Innumerable birds twittered their good-night melodies in the treetops. Frogs croaked in satisfaction in the ditch that watered the alfalfa. A few hens troubled with insomnia loitered about the yard, crooning to themselves as they pecked hopefully at pebbles that looked like grain. The brook sang softly its unchangeable song of the days when the mountains heaved as the earth grew cold, the travail that gave it birth.
“Just make yerselves to home, folks,” invited the mountaineer. “Ye c’n turn yer stock on th’ ’falfy if ye ain’t afraid o’ founderin’ ’em. Lot’s Wife she don’t care for ’falfy. She likes to browse offen th’ sage an’ bresh. I’ll look at my rain gauge, an’ then I’ll chop some wood and we’ll get a fire goin’.”
He fluttered to the alfalfa patch and gave studious attention to something on the ground. Then he returned to the tired party, and sighing, “Not a drop!” he began helping to off-saddle the steaming animals.
The quartette left Henry to his own domestic serenity in the little cabin, themselves camping at a decent distance from the house on a spot where Henry had neglected to distribute his heterogeneous treasure trove. They built a cheery campfire, over which Mary Temple cooked supper. Then when Shirttail Henry had rejoined them they settled down for a discussion of the morrow’s undertaking.
“She’s a rarin’ trip,” Henry said discouragingly. “First ye gotta finish climbin’ this here mountain here, and then ye’ll come on a level valley where they’s a lake. They’s salt grass and bluejoint around the lake, but the frost’s ketched it by now, an’ it’ll be dryin’. Yer stock’ll eat it, though, and fatten on it. An’ that’s th’ place to pasture ’em till ye get back ag’in.
“So now we’ve disposed o’ th’ critters. An’ then we hike across th’ valley an’ cut up a cañon on th’ other side. In th’ cañon they’s a crick that empties into th’ lake. Well, then we folly that crick for ten miles, maybe—an’ it’s a job. All boulders bigger ner my cabin, an’ down trees an’ th’ like. Well, then we’re pretty high up, an’ now we cut across through th’ timber towards Dewlap Mountain. That’s where we’re headin’ for.
“Now and then we’ll be seein’ th’ mountain, but not often. We gotta go by compass—at least you folks would. I go by guess and by gosh. Well, then, that’s a matter o’ twenty mile to th’ foot o’ th’ peak, and up it’s a heap more.
“Now not a few folks have made this side o’ Dewlap Mountain, but mighty few ever got on th’ other side. I done it, and so has Reed. That’s th’ forest ranger that first saw th’ undiscovered valley. Gettin’ ’round on th’ other side o’ the mountain is where th’ rub comes in—that is, th’ rubbin’est rub. The top o’ th’ peak’s above th’ line of perpetual snow, an’ up there, besides, it’s all rocks an’ steep places till ye can’t rest. It’s skeery gettin’ ’round to th’ other side; an’ many a time ye wisht ye hadn’t come, when ye look down on what’s below ye—or what ain’t below ye. But I made her an’ Reed he made her, an’ ye gotta do it to see the undiscovered valley. But gettin’ to the toes o’ Dewlap Mountain ain’t no fun neither.”