“What shall you do, Jane, while we are learning to shoot?” Julie inquired when the kitchen had again been tidied and the children were ready for their very first lesson with the small gun.
“Maybe Jane’ll want to learn too,” Gerald suggested, but the older girl declared that she simply could not and would not touch one of the dreadful things.
“Won’t you come with us and watch the fun?” Dan lingered, when the two active youngsters had bounded out of the cabin. But the girl shook her head. “It wouldn’t be fun to me,” she said fretfully. “I’d much rather be left all alone. I want to write a long letter to Merry. She will be eager to hear from me, just as I am from her.” There was a self-pitying tone in the girl’s voice and a slight quiver to her lips. She turned hastily into her room and closed the door. She did not want Dan to see the tears. The lad went out on the wide front porch and stood for a moment with folded arms, his gray eyes gazing across the sun-shimmered valley, but he was not conscious of the grandeur of the scene. He was regretting, deeply regretting that he had permitted his sister to come to a country so distasteful to her. He well knew that she had shut herself in her room to sob out her grief and disappointment and then perhaps to write it all to this friend of whom she so often spoke and whom she seemed to love so dearly.
Once Dan turned toward the door as though to return to the cabin. His impulse was to go to Jane and tell her not to unpack. The stage would be passing there again on the following day, and, if she wished she could go back to the East. In fact, the lad almost believed that if Jane went, it might hasten his recovery. Her evident unhappiness was causing him to worry, and that was most detrimental. With a deep sigh of resignation, he did turn toward the open door, bent on carrying out his resolve, but a cry of alarm from Julie sent him running around the cabin and up toward the brook.
He met the children, white-faced, big-eyed, hurrying toward him, Gerald carrying the small gun.
“What is it, Gerry? What have you seen to frighten you?” He looked about as he spoke, but saw nothing but the jagged mountain side, the rushing, whirling brook and the peaceful old pines.
But it was quite evident by the expressions of the two children that they at least thought they had seen something of a dangerous nature. Gerald pointed toward a clump of low-growing pines on the other side of the brook as he said in a tense, half-whispered voice: “Whatever ’twas, Dan, it’s hiding in there.” Then he explained: “Julie and I were crossing the water on those big stones when, snap, something went. I whirled to look. Honest, I expected to see a grizzly, but there wasn’t anything at all in sight. Julie and I stood just as still as we could; we didn’t even make a sound! Then we saw those bushy trees moving, though there wasn’t a bit of wind, so we know whatever ’tis, it’s in there.”
While the small boy had been talking, Dan had been loading the gun. “You’d better let me go alone,” he said to the children, but their disappointed expressions caused him to add: “At least let me go ahead, and if I think best for you to come, I’ll beckon.”
Dan crossed the brook on the big stones and went toward the clump of small stubby pines. Then he stood still, watching the dense low trees intently. His heart beat rapidly, not from fear, for he almost hoped that it might be a grizzly, and yet, would it not be unwise to shoot at it with a small gun? It might infuriate a huge beast, and so endanger all of their lives. But, although he waited, watching and listening for many minutes, no sound was heard. He began to believe that the children had imagined the stealthy noise they thought they had heard, for, after all, they had not really seen anything, and so he beckoned them to join him. They leaped across the brook and were quickly at his side.
“Wasn’t it a bear, or a wildcat, or anything?” Gerald asked eagerly. Dan shook his head, as he replied with a laugh: “Don’t be too disappointed, youngsters, even if you don’t see everything on the first day. This time it was just a false alarm.”