“A prisoner in a cabin,” she groaned. “And yet they do not treat me badly. For my supper they set on the table the best they had. It meant a real sacrifice for them to give up this entire room to me, yet they did it. I can’t understand it.”
“But I must not let them defeat me!” She brought her feet down with a slap upon the clean scrubbed and sanded floor. “Somehow, by some means or another, I must make my way to Caleb Powell’s home to-day.”
Her eyes lighted upon an object that hung above the fireplace—a long barreled squirrel rifle with a shiny new cap resting beneath the hammer. “Loaded,” she thought. “Cap wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t. They left it hanging there because I am a girl and they were certain I couldn’t shoot. Hump! I can shoot as straight as any of them.”
For a moment a wild vision whirled before her—a vision of a girl bursting from a room, yelling like a wild Indian and brandishing the long rifle above her head.
“No,” she smiled. “’Twouldn’t do. It would be very dramatic, but it would probably end in tragedy, and I have no desire to act a part in such a tragedy.”
She dressed quickly, then stepped into the other room of the cabin where she found crisp, brown biscuits, wild honey and fried eggs awaiting her.
She ate a hearty breakfast. “Who knows what strength I may need for this day?” she thought to herself as she spread honey on her third biscuit.
After that, knowing from past experiences what her limitations would be, she did not attempt to go many steps from the cabin but contented herself with sitting outside the cabin door in the sun.
“Such a lovely scene,” she sighed as she looked away and away to where the peaks of Pine Mountain blended with the bluer peaks of Big Black Mountain, and all at last were lost in the hazy mists of the morning.
“So peaceful,” she thought, “you’d think there had never been a bit of trouble since the world began. And yet, right down here in the mountains there is more trouble than anywhere else in the country. Some men say that Nature, God’s open book, will make men good and kind. It takes more than that. It takes—it must take God inside their hearts to accomplish that.” So she mused, and half the morning slipped away.