It was a trail of mud and washout. It was a trail of landslide and flood. It was a dripping land, dank with melting mists, and awash with the slush of the thaw. The skies were pouring out their flood of summer promise, those warming rains which must always be endured before the hordes of flies and mosquitoes swarm to announce the real open season.
But these men were hard beyond all complaint at physical discomfort. If they cursed the land they haunted, it was because it was their habit so to curse. It was the curse of the tongue rather than of the heart. For they were men who owed all that they were, or ever hoped to be, to this fierce country north of "sixty."
Spring was over all. The northern earth was heaving towards awakening from its winter slumber. As it was on the trail, so it was on Snake River, where the old black walls of Fort Mowbray gazed out upon the groaning and booming glacial bed, burying the dead earth beyond the eyes of man. The fount of life was renewing itself in man, in beast, even in the matter we choose to regard as dead.
Jessie Mowbray was watching the broken ice as it swept on down the flooding river. She was clad in an oilskin which had only utility for its purpose. Her soft gray eyes were gazing out through the gently falling rain with an awe which the display of winter's break up never failed to inspire in her.
The tremendous power of Nature held her spellbound. It was all so vast, so sure. She had witnessed these season's changes since her childhood and never in her mind had they sunk to the level of routine. They were magical transformations wrought by the all-powerful fairy, Nature. They were performed with a wave of the wand. The iron of winter was swept away with a rush, and the stage was instantly set for summer.
But the deepest mystery to her was the glacier beyond the river. Every spring she listened to its groaning lamentation with the same feelings stirring. Her gentle spirit saw in it a monster, a living, moving, heaving monster, whose voice awoke the echoes of the hills in protest, and whose enveloping folds clung with cruel tenacity to a conquered territory laboring to free itself from a bondage of sterility which it had borne for thousands of years. To her it was like the powers of Good battling with influences of Evil. It was as though each year, when the sun rose higher and higher in the sky, these powers of Good were seeking vainly to overthrow an evil which threatened the tiny human seed planted in the world for the furthering of an All-wise Creator's great hidden purpose.
The landing was almost awash with the swollen waters. The booming ice-floes swept on. They were moving northwards, towards the eternal ice-fields, to melt or jamb on their way, but surely to melt in the end. And when they had all gone it would be summer. And life—life would be renewed at the post.
Renewal of the life at the post meant only one thing for Jessie. It meant the early return of John Kars. The thought of it thrilled her. But the thrill passed. For she knew his coming only heralded his passing on.
She sighed and her soft eyes grew misty. Nor had the mist to do with the rain which was saturating the world about her. Oh, if there were to be no passing on! But she knew she could not hope for so much. There was nothing for him here. Besides, he was wedded to the secrets of the long trail.
Wedded! Her moment, of regret passed, and a great dream filled her simple mind. It was her woman's dream of all that could ever crown her life. It was the springtime of her life and all the buoyant hope of the break from a dead winter was stirring in her young veins. She put from her mind the "passing on," and remembered only that he would soon return.