A Man for the Ages | Page 8

body in my arms again and feel it breathing!
In all my life I never saw a prettier baby. It felt good to be in a real
house and sleep in a soft, warm bed and to eat jelly and cookies and
fresh meat and potatoes and bread and butter. Samson played for them
and kept them laughing with his stories until bedtime. They wouldn't
take a cent and gave us a dozen eggs in a basket and a piece of venison
when we went away. Their name is Sanford and I have promised to
write to them. They are good Christian folks and they say that maybe
they will join us in the land of plenty if we find it all we expect."
They had two rainy, cold days, with a northeast wind blowing and deep
mud in the roads. The children complained of the cold. After a few
miles' travel they stopped at an old hunter's camp facing a great mossy
rock near the road.

"Guess we'll stop here for a visit," said Samson.
"Who we goin' to visit?" Joe asked.
"The trees and the fairies," said his father. "Don't ye hear 'em askin' us
to stop? They say the wind is blowin' bad an' that we'd better stop an'
make some good weather. They offer us a house and a roof to cover it
and some wood to burn. I guess we'll be able to make our own sunshine
in a few minutes."
Samson peeled some bark and repaired the roof and, with his flint and
tinder and some fat pine, built a roaring fire against the rock and soon
had his family sitting, in its warm glow, under shelter. Near by was
another rude framework of poles set in crotches partly covered with
bark which, with a little repairing, made a sufficient shelter for Pete and
Colonel. Down by a little brook a few rods away he cut some balsams
and returned presently with his arms full of the fragrant boughs. These
he dried in the heat of the fire and spread in a thick mat on the ground
under the lean-to. It was now warm with heat, reflected from the side of
the great rock it faced. The light of the leaping flames fell upon the
travelers.
"Ye see ye can make yer own weather and fill it with sunshine if ye
only know how," said Samson, as he sat down and brushed a coal out
of the ashes and swiftly picked it up with his fingers and put it into the
bowl of his clay pipe. "Mother and I read in a book that the wood was
full o' sunlight all stored up and ready for us to use. Ye just set it afire
and out comes the warm sunlight for days like this. God takes pretty
good care of us--don't He?"
The heat of other fires had eaten away a few inches of the base of the
rock. Under its overhang some one had written with a black coal the
words "Bear Valley Camp." On this suggestion the children called for a
bear story, and lying back on the green mat of boughs, Samson told
them of the great bear of Camel's Hump which his father had slain, and
many other tales of the wilderness.
They lived two days in this fragrant, delightful shelter until the storm

had passed and the last of their corn meal had been fed to the horses.
They were never to forget the comfort and the grateful odors of their
camp in Bear Valley.
On a warm, bright day in the sand country after the storm they came to
a crude, half finished, frame house at the edge of a wide clearing. The
sand lay in drifts on one side of the road. It had evidently moved in the
last wind. A sickly vegetation covered the field. A ragged, barefooted
man and three scrawny, ill clad children stood in the dooryard. It was
noon-time. A mongrel dog, with a bit of the hound in him, came
bounding and barking toward the wagon and pitched upon Sambo and
quickly got the worst of it. Sambo, after much experience in
self-defense, had learned that the best way out of such trouble was to
seize a leg and hang on. This he did. The mongrel began to yelp.
Samson lifted both dogs by the backs of their necks, broke the hold of
Sambo and tossed aside the mongrel, who ran away whining.
"That reminds me of a bull that tackled a man over in Vermont," said
he. "The man had a club in his hand. He dodged and grabbed the bull's
tail and beat him all over the lot. As the bull roared, the man hollered:
'I'd like to know who began this