“I gave the postmaster a specially good tip to see that we got our mail out promptly.”
“So did I,” Clark admitted.
The face of the serious man lighted; and, their eyes meeting, the three friends smiled all together.
The sun rose higher, without a breath of wind from over the prairies, and one after another the men removed their top-coats. The horses’ hoofs splashed at each step in slush and running water, sending drops against the dashboard with a sound like rain.
The trail which they were following could now scarcely be seen, except at intervals on higher ground, where hoof-prints and the tracks of wheels were scored in the soft mud, and with each mile these marks grew deeper and broader as the partly frozen earth softened.
The air of solemnity which had hung about the men for days, and which lifted from time to time only temporarily, now silenced them again. Indeed, had there been anybody present to observe, he doubtless would have been impressed most of all with the unwonted 90 soberness of the wagon’s occupants, a gravity strangely at variance with the rampant, fecund season.
And the object of their journeying into this unknown world was in all truth a matter for silence rather than speech; its influence was toward deep and earnest meditation, to which the joyous, awakening world could do no more than chant in a minor key a melancholy accompaniment. Never did a soldier advancing upon a breach in the enemy’s breastworks more certainly confront the grinning face of Death, than did this trio in their progress across the singing prairie; but where the plaudits of the world spelled glory for the one, the three in the wagon knew that for them Death meant oblivion, extinction, a blotting out that must needs be utter and inevitable.
The thoughts of each dwelt upon some aspect of two scenes which had happened only a brief fortnight previously. There had been a notable convention of physicians in a city many miles to the east. One delegate, a man young, slender, firm of jaw, his face shining 91 with zeal and the spirit which courts self-immolation, had addressed the body. His speech had made a profound impression––after its first effect of sensation had subsided––upon the hundreds gathered there, who hearkened amazedly; but of those hundreds only two had been moved to lay aside the tools of their calling and follow him.
And whither was he leading them? Into the Outer Darkness, each firmly believed. For them the future was spelled nihil; for the world, salvation––perhaps.
The inspired voice still rang in memory.