“I’m goin’ to sleep till dinner—don’t let anybody wake me,” he said, and at once both the girls were serious and kind.
“We won’t, Dave.”
Cow-bells began to clang at the edge of the forest.
“There they are,” cried Polly. “Come on, Lyddy.”
The two girls picked up piggins and squeezed through the opening between the heavy gates. The young hunter entered a door and within threw himself across a rude bed, face down.
“Honor!” cried one of the old women, “you go an’ git a bucket o’ water.” The whir stopped instantly, the girl stepped with a sort of slow majesty from the cabin, and, entering the next, paused on the threshold as her eyes caught the powerful figure stretched on the bed and already in heavy sleep. As she stepped softly for the bucket she could not forbear another shy swift glance; she felt the flush in her face and to conceal it she turned her head angrily when she came out. A few minutes later she was at the spring and ladling water into her pail with a gourd. Near by the other two girls were milking—each with her forehead against the soft flank of a dun-colored cow whose hoofs were stained with the juice of wild strawberries. Honor dipped lazily. When her bucket was full she fell a-dreaming, and when the girls were through with their task they turned to find her with deep, unseeing eyes on the dark wilderness.
“Boo!” cried Polly, startling her, and then teasingly:
“Are you in love with Dave, too, Honor?”
The girl reddened.
“No,” she whipped out, “an’ I ain’t goin’ to be.” And then she reddened again angrily as Polly’s hearty laugh told her she had given herself away. For a moment the three stood like wood-nymphs about the spring, vigorous, clear-eyed, richly dowered with health and color and body and limb—typical mothers-to-be of a wilderness race. And as Honor turned abruptly for the fort, a shot came from the woods followed by a war-whoop that stopped the blood shuddering in their veins.