“An’ so these is your wife an’ childern, be they?” said Job, passing toward the sled, whose occupants were so muffled in bed-quilts and blankets that nothing of their forms, and but little of their features, were visible.
“How dedo, marm. How dedo, little uns. Tol’able comf’table, I hope?”
Ruth Beeman answered his kind salutation as audibly as she could out of her mufflings, and the children, a boy of twelve and a girl of three years younger, stared at him with round, wondering eyes.
“It’s a hard life that lies afore women an’ children in this wilderness,” he said to himself, and then, in a louder tone: “Wal, I’m glad you’re goin’ to be nigh the Fort. There’s always a doctor there, an’ it’s sort o’ protection, if the garrison be reg’lars. Now, Seth, start up your team, an’ I’ll boost on the sled till it’s square on the road again.”
So saying, he set his shoulder to one of the sled stakes, while Seth carefully started the oxen forward. With a heaving lurch and prolonged creak, the sled settled upon evener ground without disturbance of its passengers or its burden of house gear and provisions, which, till now, had hidden from view of the hunter a gentle little cow in lead close behind it.
“How far be we from the Fort?” Seth asked.
“Nigh onto five mile,” the hunter answered, after considering their whereabouts a moment. “After a spell you’ll come to a better road on the ice of the crik, if you take the first blazed path beyend here, to your left. It’ll fetch you to my cabin, where you’d better stop till morning, for you can’t no ways git to your pitch till long arter nightfall. I know where it is, for I come across it, last fall, when I was trappin’ mushrat up the crik. My shanty’s the first thing in the shape of a dwelling that you’ll come to, an’ can’t miss it if you foller the back track of my snowshoes. It hain’t so great, but it’s better’n no shelter, an’ you’re more’n welcome to it. Rake open the fire an’ build you a rouster, an’ make yourselves to home. I’ve got some traps to tend to, but I’ll be back afore dark,” and, almost before they could thank him, he disappeared among the trees.
Seth took his place upon the sled, and, as it moved forward, the forest again resumed its solemnity of silence, that was rather made more apparent than at all disturbed by the slight sounds of the party’s progress. It was a silence that their lonely journey had long since accustomed them to, but had not made less depressing, for, in every waking moment, it reminded Seth and his wife how every foot of it withdrew them further from old friends and old associations, and how long and wearisome the days of its endurance stretched before them.
The remainder of the day was made pleasanter by the chance finding of a friend in a strange land, and with a prospect of spending a night under a roof, for, however it might be, it could but be better than the almost shelterless bivouac that had many times been their night lodging since they entered the great Northern Wilderness, that, within a few years, had become known as the New Hampshire Grants.
More than once, when they had fallen asleep with only the mesh of netted branches between them and the serene stars, they had been awakened by the long howl of the wolves answering one another, or by the appalling scream of a panther. Then, with frequent replenishment of the fire, they had watched out the weary hours till morning, alarmed by every falling brand or sough of the breeze, or resonant crack of frost-strained trees.