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Page 81
We were going to meet down at the post-office, the whole gang of us, and
I had quite a spell to walk. I was going in on Bob Stokes's team. I
remember how fast I walked with my hands in my pockets, looking along up
at the stars,--the sun was putting them out pretty fast,--and trying not
to think of Nancy. But I didn't think of anything else.
It was so early, that there wasn't many folks about to see us off; but
Bob Stokes's wife,--she lived nigh the office, just across the
road,--she was there to say good-by, kissing of him, and crying on his
shoulder. I don't know what difference that should make with Bob Stokes,
but I snapped him up well, when he came along, and said good morning.
There were twenty-one of us just, on that gang, in on contract for Dove
and Beadle. Dove and Beadle did about the heaviest thing on woodland of
anybody, about that time. Good, steady men we were, most of us,--none of
your blundering Irish, that wouldn't know a maple from a hickory, with
their gin-bottles in their pockets,--but our solid, Down-East Yankee
heads, owning their farms all along the river, with schooling enough to
know what they were about 'lection day. You didn't catch any of _us_
voting your new-fangled tickets when he had meant to go up on Whig, for
want of knowing the difference, nor visa vussy. To say nothing of Bob
Stokes, and Holt, and me, and another fellow,--I forget his name,--being
members in good and reg'lar standing, and paying in our five dollars to
the parson every quarter, charitable.
Yes, though I say it that shouldn't say it, we were as fine a looking
gang as any in the county, starting off that morning in our red
uniform,--Nancy took a sight of pains with my shirt, sewing it up stout,
for fear it should bother me ripping, and I with nobody to take a stitch
for me all winter. The boys went off in good spirits, singing till they
were out of sight of town, and waving their caps at their wives and
babies standing in the window along on the way. I didn't sing. I thought
the wind blew too hard,--seems to me that was the reason,--I'm sure
there must have been a reason, for I had a voice of my own in those
days, and had led the choir perpetual for five years.
We weren't going in very deep; Dove and Beadle's lots lay about thirty
miles from the nearest house; and a straggling, lonely sort of place
that was too, five miles out of the village, with nobody but a dog and a
deaf old woman in it. Sometimes, as I was telling you, we had been in a
hundred miles from any human creature but ourselves.
It took us two days to get there though, with the oxen; and the teams
were loaded down well, with so many axes and the pork-barrels;--I don't
know anything like pork for hefting down more than you expect it to,
reasonable. It was one of your ugly gray days, growing dark at four
o'clock, with snow in the air, when we hauled up in the lonely place.
The trees were blazed pretty thick, I remember, especially the pines;
Dove and Beadle always had that done up prompt in October. It's pretty
work going in blazing while the sun is warm, and the woods like a great
bonfire with the maples. I used to like it, but your mother wouldn't
hear of it when she could help herself, it kept me away so long.
It's queer, Johnny, how we do remember things that ain't of no account;
but I remember, as plainly as if it were yesterday morning, just how
everything looked that night, when the teams came up, one by one, and we
went to work spry to get to rights before the sun went down.
There were three shanties,--they don't often have more than two or three
in one place,--they were empty, and the snow had drifted in; Bob
Stokes's oxen were fagged out with their heads hanging down, and the
horses were whinnying for their supper. Holt had one of his great
brush-fires going,--there was nobody like Holt for making fires,--and
the boys were hurrying round in their red shirts, shouting at the oxen,
and singing a little, some of them low, under their breath, to keep
their spirits up. There was snow as far as you could see,--down the
cart-path, and all around, and away into the woods; and there was snow
in the sky now, setting in for a regular nor'easter. The trees stood up
straight all around without any leaves, and under the bushes it was as
black as pitch.
"Five months," said I to myself,--"five months!"
"What in time's the matter with you, Hollis?" says Bob Stokes, with a
great slap on my arm; "you're giving that 'ere ox molasses on his hay!"
Sure enough I was, and he said I acted like a dazed creatur, and very
likely I did. But I couldn't have told Bob the reason. You see, I knew
Nancy was just drawing up her little rocking-chair--the one with the red
cushion--close by the fire, sitting there with the children to wait for
the tea to boil. And I knew--I couldn't help knowing, if I'd tried hard
for it--how she was crying away softly in the dark, so that none of
them could see her, to think of the words we'd said, and I gone in
without ever making of them up. I was sorry for them then. O Johnny, I
was sorry, and she was thirty miles away. I'd got to be sorry five
months, thirty miles away, and couldn't let her know.
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