“I think we are not quite sure about that yet,” replied Mrs. Haddon. “It’s very pleasant here, and I’m very tired. Do you suppose, Jim,” said she, turning to her husband, “we could rest here for a while? It’s very beautiful here, and I feel I’m going to be comfortable.”
“That’s how we try to make everybody feel,” said the Widow Dunham. As she spoke to the woman, her eyes were upon the man. She was what was sometimes termed by her neighbors a marrying woman, and all men, married or single, she estimated with a keen eye and one experienced.
Haddon laughed a gusty laugh. “We’re fifty miles short of the real Cumberlands here, Marcia. Our property runs from thirty to fifty or even sixty miles back in. To tell the truth, I haven’t seen any of our lands, although we’ve got more than a million invested in here.”
“There’s a power of land been bought—timber an’ coal rights—for the last twenty year,” assented the Widow Dunham. “Now they do tell me that they’re a-findin’ oil on some of that land up in yander. No tellin’ what’ll happen. There’s even talk maybe there’ll be a railroad up Hell-fer-Sartin one of these days afore long.”
“Who told you about these things?” inquired the newcomer with a certain asperity. “Don’t let it get out—don’t talk about anything. By the way, I’ve got to get some sort of guide—some man who knows that country, and will take me in. Know of anybody?”
“Why, I don’t know, Mr. Haddon,” replied the widow ruminatingly, “who ye could git to take ye in. There’s a young man I got around the house—he just come out.”
“You don’t mean the chap that was down at the boat-landing, do you? He’s out in the yard now.”
The Widow Dunham nodded contemplatively. “Yes. His name’s David Joslin. Folks here knows the Joslins. He’s a mounting man—borned an’ bred up in there, fifty mile or so. He’s one of the best raft steersmen on this river—been right wild in his time, but he ain’t a-skeered of nothin’. That’s the name he’s got in these mountings. Maybe ye’d better ax him. He’s a-workin’ down to the brick yard now, an’ tell I give him yore old coat an’ shoes he didn’t have a stitch of clothes to his name, so to speak. He orter be willin’ to go to hell for a dollar a day, an’ I reckon he would.”
“Well, I guess it’ll be a hell of a trip up in there,” said Haddon in reply. “What do you think, Marcia?”
But Marcia Haddon neither then nor at any later time, while partaking of the rude fare of the place, made any comment or expressed any discontent.