Pete nodded wisely. "The world would be just as well off if all men hit down a new road when the old one ends blind. Only most of us lack the courage to get off paths we know. Especially when we're older. I envy you."
"Don't be so darn philosophical, Pete. Come on. Let's go in and wait for something to eat."
Pete Domley finished his meal and rode away. A great restlessness gnawed at Joe, and he felt his usual imperative urge to be doing something. Only now it was a happy anticipation, and not a frustrating tenseness. Joe glanced at the lowering sun, decided that at least an hour of daylight remained, and a moment later Tad joined him.
"Hey, Pa, let's be doin' somethin'. Huh?"
"Sure. Let's bring some of that oak and hickory in from the wood lot."
Joe was amazed. Ordinarily Tad could be forced to work only under threat of immediate punishment. Even then, unless he liked it, he would not keep at whatever task was assigned him unless he were watched every second. That he should offer of his own free will to help was itself a minor revolution, and proof that he was infected with what Joe was beginning to think of as Oregon fever.
They caught and harnessed the mules. Joe shouldered a peavey—a logger's hook—and let Tad drive the mules to the wood lot. Joe used his peavey to roll half a dozen of the seasoned oak and hickory logs over a long chain, bound the chain around them, and hitched the mules to it. In the gathering twilight, Joe and his son walked side by side while the mules dragged the logs back to the house. They unharnessed the mules and let them frolic in their pasture.
The logs lay ready to be taken to John Geragty's saw mill. Joe gave them one final glance. When they were sawed into boards he would use part of them himself. Part John Geragty would take as pay for his labor, and the rest would be sold or traded for all the things they needed and did not have for their trip to Oregon. It was the first short step.
Joe felt a surging, happy restlessness, but he had no wish to go to the store. It seemed as though, somehow, his family had become a unique group that had nothing to do with anybody else and were no part of anyone else. They were going to Oregon while all the rest were staying here, and that set them apart. Joe wanted to stay with them because of this new-found and delightful kinship with each other.
He watched Barbara and Emma folding Emma's wedding dress, a long white, frilly thing, between clean curtains. Obviously the dress was destined to be part of the contents of a trunk that yawned on the kitchen floor. Joe got up to lend a hand; the dress could be folded much more compactly and thus occupy less space.