“You know, lad, it won’t be so long before the snow will be down on us, and I’m thinking what shall we do with them when the long winter days set in.” He nodded his head toward the cabin. “It’s already getting too cold for them to sit out of doors as they do. I should have windows in my cabin––if I could get the glass up here. They can’t live there in the darkness, with the snow banked around them, with nothing to use their fingers on as women like to do. Now, if they had cloth or thread––but what use 211 had I for such things? They’re not among my stores. I did not lay out to make it a home for women. The mother will get farther and farther astray with her dreams if she has nothing to do such as women like.”
“I think we should ask them––or ask Amalia, she is wise. Have you enough to keep them on––of food?”
“Of food, yes. Such as it is. No flour, but plenty of good wheat and corn. I always pound it up and bake it, but it is coarse fare for women. There’s plenty of game for the hunting, and easy got, but it’s something to think about we’ll need, else we’ll all go loony.”
“You have lived long here alone and seem sound of mind,––except for––” Harry King smiled, “except for a certain unworldliness that would pass for lunacy in the world below these heights.”
“Let alone, son. I’ve usually had my own way for these years and have formed the habit, but I’ve had my times. At the best it’s a sort of lunacy that takes a man away from his fellows, especially an Irishman. Maybe you’ll discover for yourself before we part––but it’s not to the point now. I’m asking you how we can keep the mother from brooding and the daughter happy? She’s asking to be sent away to earn money for her mother. She thinks she can take her mother with her to the nearest place on that new railroad you tell me of, and so on to some town. I tell her, no. And if she goes, and leaves her mother here––bless you––what would we do with her? Why, the woman would go yonder and jump over the cliff.”
“Oh, it would never do to listen to her. It would never do for her to try living in a city earning her bread––not while––” Harry King paused and turned a white, drawn 212 face toward the mountain. Larry watched him. “I can do nothing.” He threw out his hands with a sudden downward movement. “I, a criminal in hiding! My manhood is of no avail! My God!”
“Remember, lad, the women have need of you right here. I’m keeping you on this mountain at my valuation, not yours. I have need of you, and your past is not to intrude in this place, and when you go out in the world again, as you will, when the right time comes, you’ll know how to meet––and face––your life––or death, as a man should.
“Hold yourself with a firm hand, and do the work of the days as they come. It’s all the Lord gives us to do at any time. If I only had books––now,––they would help us,––but where to get them––or how? We’ll even go and ask the women, as you advise.”
They all ate together in the little cabin, as was their habit, a meal prepared by Amalia, and carefully set out with all the dishes the cabin afforded: so few that there were not enough to serve all at once, but eked out by wooden blocks, and small lace serviettes taken from Amalia’s store of linen. At noon one day Larry Kildene spoke his anxieties for their welfare, and cleverly managed to make the theme a gay one.
“Where’s the use in adopting a family if you don’t get society out of them? The question I ask is, when the winter shuts us in, what are we going to do for sport––work––what you will? It’s indoor sport I’m meaning, for Harry and I have the hunting and providing in the daytime. No, never you ask me what I was doing before you came. I was my own master then––”