“Well, what does he paint?”
“That’s his business. Sometimes I see he has a mountain there on a picture, and next time I see it’s been changed to a lake or something else.”
MEAL TIME
One can imagine Olson with his questioners. The thing he most wants, his ambition, one might say, is to make people sit up and take notice of Fox Island, his homestead. It is in fact one reason why he brought us here to live. Thanks to its amateur detective, Seward had rejoiced for a short time in rumors of a German spy on Fox Island. I told Olson that the authorities might still come and remove me. He flared up, “I’d like to see them try it! We could take to the mountains with guns, and more than one of them would never try the thing again.” And then he went on to tell me how in Idaho he had tracked for days and weeks a notorious gang of outlaws and horse-thieves and at last run them to earth,—one of his most thrilling and, I believe, absolutely true stories of his adventures.
At this moment a steamer is blowing in the bay, navigating by the echo from the mountain faces. She is near to us now but hidden by the snowstorm.
Rockwell has begun to write the story of a long, waking dream of his. It’s a sweet idea and reads most amusingly in his own queer spelling. Now, though it is already late, I must draw a while longer and then, after bathing in the bread pan, sit up in bed and read a chapter of the life of Blake.
Friday, November eighth.
It is so late that I half expect to see the dawn begin. I have been working on a drawing of Rockwell and his father—and it looks ever so fine.
Whew! just at this moment the wind has swept down upon our cabin and blown the roof in as far as it would with great creaking yield,—and then passed on sucking it out in its wake to such a spread that a board that lay across overhead like a collar-beam has fallen with a crash and clatter,—and Rockwell sleeps on! The wind does blow to-night, and it doesn’t stop outside the walls of the cabin either. My lamp flutters annoyingly. But ah! the room is comfortable and warm.