“This is Mr. Norcross, the tourist I told you about,” explained Berrie.
Mrs. McFarlane extended her small hand with friendly impulse. “I’m very glad to meet you, sir. Are you going to spend some time at the Mill?”
“I don’t know. I have a letter to Mr. Meeker from a friend of mine who hunted with him last year—a Mr. Sutler.”
“Mr. Sutler! Oh, we know him very well. Won’t you sit down?”
The interior of the house was not only well kept, but presented many evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall, and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and Norcross, feeling the force of Nash’s half-expressed criticism of his “superior,” listened intently to Mrs. McFarlane’s apologies for the condition of the farmyard.
“Well,” said Berea, sharply, “if we’re to reach Uncle Joe’s for dinner we’d better be scratching the hills.” And to her mother she added: “I’ll pull in about dark.”
The mother offered no objection to her daughter’s plan, and the young people rode off together directly toward the high peaks to the east.
“I’m going by way of the cut-off,” Berrie explained; and Norcross, content and unafraid, nodded in acquiescence. “Here is the line,” she called a few minutes later, pointing at a sign nailed to a tree at the foot of the first wooded hill.
The notice, printed in black ink on a white square of cloth, proclaimed this to be the boundary of the Bear Tooth National Forest, and pleaded with all men to be watchful of fires. Its tone was not at all that of a strong government; it was deprecatory.
The trail, hardly more than a wood road, grew wilder and lonelier as they climbed. Cattle fed on the hillsides in scattered bands like elk. Here and there a small cabin stood on the bank of a stream; but, for the most part, the trail mounted the high slopes in perfect solitude.