CHAPTER II
The Marton Homestead
MOLLY MARTON was standing in the storm doorway of her home. She was gazing out at the magnificence of the winter sunset blazing on the crystal peaks of the far-off mountains. The hour of the evening meal was approaching, and the savoury odours of simple cooking pervaded the warm interior behind her. In less than an hour the glory of the sunset would have passed, and the purpling twilight would reduce the snowbound world to the bleak prospect of the reality of the season.
The girl was awaiting her father’s return from his day’s work in the timber belt. It was the time of the early winter labours, when the haulage of cordwood for the fuel store was the chief consideration. He would be along soon now, and everything was in readiness for his comfort.
Molly’s devotion to her father was almost a passion. Her mother had been dead for many years, and in all her eighteen years the girl had never known a moment when her sturdy father had not been the whole of everything to her.
The Marton homestead was far enough beyond such civilisation as city or township afforded. It was set in the heart of the lesser foothills of the Rockies. Its nearest human neighbour was an Irishman of ill-repute, Dan Quinlan, who boasted some sort of a mixed ranch about twenty-five miles farther up in the hills, and the nearest township was that of Hartspool, some twenty-odd miles to the east, where the hills came down to the prairie lands, and the waters of Whale River flooded its banks every time the spring freshet broke.
Molly loved her home, and the hard, free life of it. She knew every trick and turn of Nature’s whim in the progress of the seasons. She asked nothing better; she knew nothing better. The sturdy life of it was hers. She had been born, and bred, and deeply inured to its hardships, and she would not have changed one moment of it for the narrower delights of city life.
Of hardships there were plenty, of privations none. The fierce winters of the hill country were no easy thing to face. But every coming of the perfect summers saw an increasing yield of the abundant fruitfulness of the earth which the thrifty mind of her French-Canadian father taught him so well how to foster.
The homestead was a whole section of land, with practically unlimited grazing rights. It consisted of a log-built and thatched home, with barns and out-buildings similarly constructed. There were corrals rudely but strongly set up, and nearly one hundred acres lay under the plough. There was a water-front on a nameless mountain creek, and a stretch of prairie feed that was pretty well inexhaustible. In short, there was everything a good farmer could need to make life reasonably prosperous and endurable in a climate that knew little of moderation.
The delight died out of Molly’s grey eyes with the passing of the sunset. And she turned her gaze in the direction where the snow-trail vanished round a bluff of woodland. It was from that direction her father would come, and she looked for him now.
She was pretty and attractive in her neat, home-made clothing, that was more calculated to resist the onslaught of the elements than add charm to the delightful figure it concealed. She was dark, in an essentially French-Canadian fashion, but her eyes were merry, and her strong young body was tall and vigorous, after the manner of the Anglo-Saxon mother she scarcely remembered. She was full of an easy patience that robbed her not one whit of a wholesome joy of life. Animal spirits were always surging in her, and helped her to discover happiness in the unlikeliest moments of the life that was hers.