"And you'll think over what I've been saying?" asked the miller.
The young man smiled, kissed his mother, and took his cap down from a nail.
"I'll tell you my decision when it's made," he replied.
CHAPTER XIII
Joel takes the Long Trail
It was the spring of the next year, and Joel Hart sat smoking outside the store of Red Rivers Town. The hunters and trappers were returning from the forest, bringing in their winter's catch of peltries, and the place swarmed with men of many races, and all grades of colour from the ebony of the negro, up through copper to the lighter eyes and fair skin of the European.
The town was a huddled collection of log houses, built round a wooden fort. Puny, dirty, and arrogant, it yet stood boldly alone, snapping its fingers—as it were—in the face of the wilderness, and telling it that the days were numbered in which its silent places would remain tenantless, and its secrets undiscovered. The forest crowded up to its very doors, like a pack of wild creatures, gathering round the circle of its fires, but kept at bay with axe and saw.
Joel looked steadily before him. There were trees, trees, trees, nothing but fluttering leaves and solemnly waving boughs for hundreds of miles. On the fringe, where some men had been felling, lay lopped limbs, fragrant logs, and stacks of small branches; but the forest stood behind like an army, watchful, waiting, full of animosity. It threatened the town as the town threatened it. Any weakness on the part of man would bring it forward in a riotous march, waving green triumphal banners.
For some days Red Rivers had been seething with excitement. It was rumoured that in the mountains, far beyond the forest, gold had been found. Already men were fitting themselves out to take the long trail, and Joel was one of them.