“Didn’t. I pulled my flax and spread it to rot, put my pack, rifle and provisions into the birch and started up-stream. I didn’t go to the Forks where I met the half-breed, but into Sewickly Creek, and paddled up it to within a rod of the road, hid the birch in the woods, took my pack and started for home.”
“That was a long hard journey.”
“It was all that. I told this little woman what I had done, made it as bad as I knew how; told her just what a miserable place she would have to live in, and gave her the choice to go back with me or I would go back alone, trap all winter and come for her in the spring, and before another winter build a more comfortable house; and all her folks and most of mine thought that was the best way.
“But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, said if I could stand it, she could; wasn’t a bit afraid, that it was the best time of the year to go because the roads were better and the streams we would have to ford were low; and that I ought to be on my land early in the spring to sow or plant the ground I had ploughed. So we got married, and then the old folks set in worse than ever for us not to go till spring, and even the neighbors took it up, but I had one on my side and he was worth all the rest.”
“Who was that?”
“Father,” said William, sinking his voice to a whisper.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Whitman, “his opinion was worth more than all the other’s opinions. A few nights before we set out, and when all the young girls, my schoolmates, were pitying me and doing all they could to make me feel worse, the good old man took me into the other room and said: ‘Mary, never you mind those young people, don’t let anything they say jar you a particle. Listen to the old man who has been over every inch of the road you and William are starting on. If you live to my age you’ll look back and say that the days you spent in the brush camp were the happiest days, for they were full of hope; but when you have lived to my age you will have outlived all your hopes but the hope of eternal life, and that is the best of all, because the possession will be more than the expectation while everything else falls short. You have got a good husband, his heart is tender as a child’s, but his mind is as firm as a piece of the nether millstone. He’s a cheery lad, he’ll look on the bright side, keep your heart up and his own too. You are married now and have taken the first step, don’t look back, it didn’t work well with Lot’s wife. I never knew it to work well with anybody, look ahead; a man isn’t half a man and a woman isn’t half a woman who has never had any load to carry. I take it you’ll work in an even yoke; you are both smart, and no doubt feel that you are equal to anything, and perhaps look down on people who have not your strength and resolution, but it is better to look up, and the first night you get into the camp I want William to take the Bible and read and pray, and I want you to ask him to.’ I didn’t have to ask him.”
“Didn’t you wish you had taken your parents’ advice before you got over the mountains, and before you got through that first winter?”
“By no means. We had no table only some pieces of bark set on four stakes, driven into the ground; no bedstead, but put the beds on the brush; we had no room for furniture, because I must have room for my wool and flax wheels, to spin the flax William had raised and the wool I had brought from home.”
“Were you comfortable?”