The Freebooters of the Wilderness | Page 8

sinkin'! Say--" sticking forward his face in a whisper--"Senator oughtn't to sink--eh?"
"You don't swim sheep unless you're a pilgrim," admonished Wayland; but at that moment, the Senator himself came over the edge of the Ridge, bloused and white-vested and out of breath, a bunch of mountain flowers in one hand, his felt hat in the other; and three men bobbed up behind, Indian file, over the crest of the trail, the Missionary, Williams, stepping lightly, MacDonald swarthy and close-lipped, taking the climb with the ease of a mountaineer, Bat Brydges, the Senator's newspaper man, hat on the back of his head, coat and vest and collar in hand, blowing with the zest of a puffing locomotive.
"Whew!" The Senator dilated expansively and sank again. "Here we are at last! You here, Miss Eleanor? Evening--Wayland! Night to you, Calamity! How is the world using you since you stopped tramping over the hills?" Calamity shrank back to the cabin. "I thought this trail hard as a climb to Paradise. Now, I know it was," and the gentleman wheezed a bow to Eleanor that sent his neck creasing to his flowing collar and set his vest chortling.
"What! No flowers--either of you? You leave an old fellow like me to gather flowers and quote 'What so rare as a day in June' and all that? What's that lazy rascal of a Forest fellow doing? I would have spouted yards of good poetry when I was his age a night like this. Hasn't Wayland told you the flowers are the best part of the mountains in June? Pshaw! Like all the rest of them from the East--stuffed full of college chuck--can't tell a daisy from an aster! Takes an old stager who never had your dude Service suits on his back to know the secrets of these hills, Miss Eleanor. Has he told you about the echo? No, I'll bet you, not; nor the gorge in behind this old Holy Cross; nor the cave? Pshaw! See here,"--showing his bunch of wild flowers--"if you want to know what a sly old sphinx Dame Nature is and how she's up to tricks and wiles and ways, snow or shine, you get these little flower people to whisper their secrets! Whenever I find a new kind on the hills, I mark the place and have roots brought down in the fall. Now this little mountain anemone is still blooming on upper slopes. Little fool of a thing thinks it's April 'stead of June, paints her cheeks, see?--like an old girl trying to look young--"
"But she has a royal white heart," interposed Eleanor.
The Senator looked up to the face of the rancher's daughter and laughed, a big soft noiseless laugh that shook down inside the white vest.
"Typical of a woman, eh? Here, take 'em! Why am I an old bachelor? Now, here's the wind flower; opens to touch o' the wind like woman to love; find 'em like stars on the bleakest slopes--that's like a woman, too, eh? And like a woman, they wither when you pick 'em, eh? And see these little cheats--pale people--catch flies--know why they call 'em that? Stuck all over with false honey to snare the moths--stew the poor devils to death in sweetness--eh, now, isn't that a woman for you?" Spreading his broad palms, the Senator shook noiselessly at his own facetiousness.
"They keep the real honey for the royal butterflies," suggested Eleanor.
"Exactly! What chance on earth for an old bumble bee of a drudge like me without any wings and frills and things, all weighted down with cares of state?" And Moyese mopped the moisture from a good natured red face, that looked anything but weighted down by the cares of state. "You know, don't you," he added, "that the flies actually do prefer white flowers; bees t' th' blue; butterflies, red; and the moths, white?"
So this was the manner of man representing the forces challenging to the great national fight, a lover of flowers paying tribute to all things beautiful; good-natured, smiling, easy-going, soft-speaking; the embodiment of vested rights done up in a white waist-coat. Soldiers of the firing line had fought dragons in the shape of savages and white bandits in the early days; but this dragon had neither horns nor hoofs. It was a courtly glossy-faced pursuer of gainful occupations according to a limited light and very much according to a belief that freedom meant freedom to make and take and break independent of the other fellow's rights. In fact, as Eleanor looked over the dragon with its wide strong jaw and plausible eyes and big gripping hand she very much doubted whether the conception had ever dawned on the big dome head that the other fellow had any rights. The man was not the baby-eating monster of the muck-rakers. Neither was