"Wall, that's no dream," said mother, bridling.
Once after his Saturday's tramp up the great hill, Pete returned looking very old. "I axed Bolt," he explained, "about this yere partnership."
"Well?" asked mother sharply. "Well?"
"Bolt says thar's pigs with pink bows to their tails, just stretchin' and stretchin' around his sty."
The old woman turned her back, for Pete was crying.
In April there came a rush of warmth out of the west, licking up all the snow, save only on that high plateau where the Hundred and Spite House seemed to wait and wait in the white silence.
The spring storms came, the rains changed to snow, the snow changed to rain, with hail-storms, and thunder rolling over snow. The cheeky little buttercups peeped up through the tails of the snowdrift, and far away, below Jesse's ranch in the Fraser cañon, the Star brand mules worshiped their old bell mare among the marigolds. The ground was bare now about Pete's cabin, all sodden pine chips to the edge of the rain-drenched bush, and the willow buds were bursting.
Pete sat under a roof of cedar shakes which he had built to shelter the new "riggings." Around him in a horseshoe stood fifty complete aparejos, each with coiled lash and sling rope underneath, breeching and crupper, sovran helmo and cinchas, sweat pad, blanket, and corona, while the head-ropes strapped the mantas over all. He was riveting the last of sixty hackamores, as he dreamed of the great north trail, of open meadows by the Hagwilgaet, of the heaven-piercing spire of Tsegeordinlth at the Forks of Skeena.
"Mother," he said, "I'm no slouch of a cargador. Them red gin cases is still to rig for kitchen boxes, and it's all complete. The mules is fattening good, I hear, and the men's the same as last summer, all worth their feed, too."
But mother, grim and fierce in the throes of her spring cleaning, had not come to admire. "Pete," she shrilled, "two more buckets of water, and yew jest git a move on. And how long hev yew bin promisin' to whittle me them clothes-pins? Now jest yew hustle, Pete, or I'll get right ugly."