Summer began to give way to winter on the mountains. There were very cold nights, and frost. The full moon made the forest spacious, and the beautiful fir-trees, like candelabras, glittering with silver lights. The mornings were of an intense stillness as if ordained whilst God walked in the garden. We had stayed three days beside a grey rock wall which was eight feet high, and it began to have the light of home upon it, and one might have lived there long.
Vachel soon began to feel much better, though he looked quaint, hobbling along the rocks and uneven woodland holding on to a tall pine-cudgel which he had cut. He wore a red cotton handkerchief over his crumpled hat, and it was tied in knots under his chin. He was weak at all joints and walked like a dwarf who lives in a hollow tree, a fairy-like antediluvian old fellow. His red wind-blown face was lined and lined. His eyes twinkled as he walked. He stooped to pick up wood, he looked cautiously about him, and I had the feeling that he would rapidly scurry away if a human being came into view.
I returned to camp for a bagful of provisions, and bright-faced Myrtle La Barge gave me a whole apple-pie to take to the poet in memory of Johnny Appleseed, and she gave me large overweight of cheese and apricots and ham and all the rest I asked for. That night a bear came after us, smelling the ham, and I said to him, “Bite Daniel, bite him, bite him!” and the bear studied us some paltry half-hour, but as the Comick saith, “his mind was in the kitchen.” And he said to the poet with a disappointed groan—“How about the ham?” But Vachel then waved his pine-cudgel and the bear did waver with his hind-quarters and ran away. The poet then became a silent watcher for the rest of the night.
We set off next day for the Kootenai River, and Vachel had tied up his game foot in a dozen ropes and bindings, and it was soaking in iodine besides, and we went very slowly and he sang hymns all the way. I said to him, “You won’t mind, Vachel, if I go ahead some distance.” For his singing scared the wild animals. The white-vested woodpecker walking like a great fly up the dead poles of old pines, tapping as he went, paused meditatively at the sound of Vachel’s voice; the grouse and the ptarmigan tripped ahead of us like hens, and scurried out of view; little piggy the porcupine trembled in all his beautiful quills; and the squirrels scolded from all the trees as if we were a terrible annoyance. I am not surprised. At school at Springfield the teacher used to say; “All sing except Vachel,” the reason being that he has his own voice entirely. Thus, in slow and devastating accents, keeping pace with the enforced slow walk and pine-cudgel progress, you might have heard him singing—
We ... shall ... dwell ... in that fair and happy ... land
Just across ... from the ever-green sho-o-re.
and I put distance between us, but ever as he caught up I could hear the scared animals rushing away. I grew facetious about the ever-green shore, after he had sung it fifty-five times, and he, with utter meekness, gave it up from that hour forth and sang instead:
When he cometh, when he cometh,
To make up his jewels.