Fortunately, the wagon was not in motion just then, so there was only the squawking of seventy or eighty crows in some trees overhead competing with the watch's rhythmic beating, which, besides being plainly audible, positively jarred the wagon.
"Splendid," laughed Bert; "but put it away, Sam, old boy, now it's served its purpose; it's a trifle too ostentatious for these surroundings."
With these playful remarks, and, realizing that further spooning was for the time being impossible, if not unwise, Bert gently disentangled himself from love's web of bliss and jumped to the ground.
Taking the risk of losing themselves on empty stomachs clean out of the hands of an extremely unreliable Fate, they first fortified themselves with food. It was a pleasant little picnic. Hard-boiled eggs, bannock and jam, and coffee without milk and sugar (the last-mentioned made on a campfire with water from a neighbouring "trout stream"), put them all in a very optimistic humour.
No wonder the minds of the Barr Colonists were filled with idealism. Only a few days before, not a speck of verdure had been visible anywhere. Now, almost magically, the trees not killed by the fire burst into leaf.
"Isn't everything lovely?" cried Esther, as she looked rapturously about her.
Beauty unfolded itself like the buds on the aspens, and as quickly. What in the morning, on the branches of the trees, were merely clusters of wax-like, tight-closed shells, were by evening myriads of fluttering leaves of the tenderest green. The long, warm days of a single week transformed the prairie from a blackened and ugly cinder to a delicate loveliness. Here was Nature in all its primeval beauty, its freshness and wildness still unsullied.
Robins called to each other from the swaying tops of trees. An occasional rabbit rushed across from one thicket to another in a wild burlesque of speed, as if it had somewhere urgent to go—then sat still for half a day. A pair of hawks, with motionless wings, circled in the agate sky. With a strange mixture of daring and innocence, gophers sat up like squirrels and squeaked defiance in thin, piercing notes. Egotistical wood-partridges strutted about, openly defying all laws of self-preservation—dainty bits of vanity; they must have known that feather ruffs were then all the rage.
After William Trailey had annihilated a very profound void within himself, he suggested, with his accustomed acumen, that he should stay and mind the camp while the others cast about for survey mounds.
"A good arrangement," agreed Bert. They failed to remember that it was quite safe to leave their stuff unguarded, seeing that for hundreds of miles around them there was scarcely a soul; but the habits of civilization, which numbers theft among its minor attributes, still persisted.