The river when they reached it was not as full as Wharton had expected, still for a few paces in the middle horses and men had to swim.
As they stood shaking themselves on the further bank, Towzer looked ruefully at his own draggled appearance and remarked:
'I believe I've got my stockings wet! Don't you think, Frank, mother would like us to change them?'
There was a laugh among the boys, and then as they tramped through the grimy, burnt forest, with its charred stumps and black, leafless branches, their thoughts went back to Fairbury.
The thought acted on the different natures differently. Towzer felt inclined to sit down and cry, and, as that would not do at any price, he began to whistle an old nigger-minstrel melody. A hard, dogged expression came into Frank's face. He would rather have been squire of Fairbury, but he meant to do his duty here all the same. And Snap! well, Snap's eyes lit up, and his head was very high in the air. He didn't know that he was leading a pack pony, and that old Wharton was wondering why the boy's eyes looked so bright and moist. Snap didn't see the grey old forest, or think of the years of daily labour, but he saw a bright picture with two sides to it: on the one a wide stretch of country dotted everywhere with cattle which bore his brand, and on the other the steps of the old hall at Fairbury, and the Winthrops, dear old Admiral Chris, and the little mother; Fairbury had been bought back, and that sweet, grey-haired woman had her hand in his, and was saying, 'I trusted you, Snap, all along; I knew my brown boy would go straight.'
Well, it was a dream, and Snap an optimist and a bit of a poet, and perhaps in nine cases out of ten such dreams only lead to disappointment; but if you are prepared to meet with disappointment, a beautiful dream is no bad thing to beguile a long march.
The country through which the boys were now travelling was as desolate and uncanny as anything which the world can show. They were crossing a belt of forest between the forks of a great stream, one arm of which they crossed in the morning. Between the two streams a great fire had raged some years ago, and range after range of rolling hills lay before them covered with tall trees charred to a cinder, yet standing upright still—grey, unburied skeletons of the past. In some places a tree which had once been nearly two hundred feet in height still reared a great grey spire towards heaven, and yet a few yards from the ground you could see that fire and weather between them had eaten the trunk almost through, so that its balance alone seemed to keep it upright. All through the brûlé, as this burnt forest is called, the trails are blocked by fallen timber. At every breeze a score of them come crashing down, and hardly a minute goes by without a snap like a rifle-shot to remind you that it is merely by an interposition of Providence that each of the great pines along your path has not fallen upon you as you passed. The difficulty of getting pack animals through a forest of this kind is considerable, although they will jump and crawl like cats; and the walking is weary work even for the strongest man, where at one moment you have to balance along the stem of a fallen pine, or climb over a log ten feet high, and the next have your pants caught by the point of a sharp rampike which tears them to shreds and perhaps takes a foot or two of skin with it.
'I am afraid Texan was right,' said Dick as they plodded along, while the sun was setting slowly in the west, 'those clouds are coming up uncommon fast, and it's main dark for three o'clock.'
Winthrop was leading 'the Cradle,' and Towzer was walking alongside of him, and when Dick spoke he spoke to Snap, who had fallen a bit behind.
'Don't you agree, Snap?' he said after a pause, and as no answer came he looked round.