"Well, we aren't going to cry, whatever else we do!" answered father, rather
sharply. He snatched the lighted lantern from its place on the dashboard
and leaped out into the road. I could hear him floundering round in that
terrible mire and soothing the horse. The next thing I realised was that the
horse was unhitched, that father had—for the first time during our
journey—laid the lash across Sheridan's back, and that, with a leap of
indignation, the horse had reached the firm ground of the roadside. Father
called out to him to stand still, and a moment later I found myself being
swung from the buggy into father's arms. He staggered along, plunging and
almost falling, and presently I, too, stood beneath the giant pines.
"One journey more," said father, "for our supper, and then we'll bivouac
right here."
Now that I was away from the buggy that was so familiar to me, and that
seemed like a little movable piece of home, I felt, as I had not felt before, the
vastness of the solitude. Above me in the rising wind tossed the tops of the
singing trees; about me stretched the soft blackness; and beneath the
dense, interlaced branches it was almost as calm and still as in a room. I
could see that the clouds were breaking and the stars beginning to come
out, and that comforted me a little.
Father was keeping up a stream of cheerful talk.
"Now, sir," he was saying to Sheridan, "stand still while I get this harness off
you. I'll tie you and blanket you, and you can lie or stand as you please.
Here's your nose-bag, with some good supper in it, and if you don't have
drink, it's not my fault. Anyway, it isn't so long since you got a good nip at
the creek."
I was watching by the faint light of the lantern, and noticing how unnatural
father and Sheridan looked. They seemed to be blocked out in a rude kind of
way, like some wooden toys I had at home.
"Here we are," said father, "like Robinson Crusoes. It was hard luck for
Robinson, not having his little girl along. He'd have had her to pick up sticks
and twigs to make a fire, and that would have been a great help to him."
Father began breaking fallen branches over his knee, and I groped round
and filled my arms again and again with little fagots. So after a few minutes
we had a fine fire crackling in a place where it could not catch the branches
of the trees. Father had scraped the needles of the pines together in such a
way that a bare rim of earth was left all around the fire, so that it could not
spread along the ground; and presently the coffee-pot was over the fire and
bacon was sizzling in the frying-pan. The good, hearty odours came out to
mingle with the delicious scent of the pines, and I, setting out our dishes,
began to feel a happiness different from anything I had ever known.
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