The Way of a Man - Emerson Hough (most read books of all time txt) 📗

Strength came to us as we had need, and gradually even the weaker of us two became able to complete the day's journey without the exhaustion it at first had cost her. Summer was now upon us, and the heat at midday was intense, although the nights, as usual, were cold. Deprived of all pack animals, except our dog, we were perforce reduced to the lightest of gear, and discomfort was our continual lot. Food, however, we could still secure, abundant meat, and sometimes the roots of plants which I dug up and tested, though I scarce knew what they were.

We moved steadily on toward the west and northwest, but although we crossed many old Indian trails, we saw no more of these travelers of the Plains. At that time the country which we were traversing had no white population, although the valley of the Platte had long been part of a dusty transcontinental highway. It was on this highway that the savages were that summer hanging, and even had we been certain of its exact location, I should have feared to enter the Platte valley, lest we should meet red men rather than white.

At times we lost the buffalo for days, more especially as we approached the foothills of the mountains, and although antelope became more numerous there, they were far more difficult to kill, and apt to cost us more of our precious ammunition. I planned to myself that if we did not presently escape I would see what might be done toward making a bow and arrows for use on small game, which we could not afford to purchase at the cost of precious powder and ball.

I was glad, therefore, when we saw the first timber of the foothills; still gladder, for many reasons, when I found that we were entering the winding course of a flattened, broken stream, which presently ran back into a shingly valley, hedged in by ranks of noble mountains, snow white on their peaks. Here life should prove easier to us for the time, the country offering abundant shelter and fuel, perhaps game, and certainly change from the monotony of the Plains.

Here, I said to myself, our westward journey must end. It would be bootless to pass beyond Laramie into the mountains, and our next course, I thought, must be toward the south. I did not know that we were then perhaps a hundred miles or more northwest of Laramie, deep in a mountain range far north of the transcontinental trail. For the time, however, it seemed wise to tarry here for rest and recruiting. I threw down the pack. "Now," said I to her, "we rest."

"Yes," she replied, turning her face to the south, "Laramie is that way now. If we stop here my father will come and find us. But then, how could he find us, little as we are, in this big country? Our trail would not be different from that of Indians, even if they found it fresh enough to read. Suppose they never found us!"

"Then," said I, "we should have to live here, forever and ever."

She looked at me curiously. "Could we?" she asked.

"Until I was too old to hunt, you too weak to sew the robes or cook the food."

"What would happen then?"

"We would die," said I. "The world would end, would have to begin all over again and wait twice ten million years until man again was evolved from the amoeba, the reptile, the ape. When we died, this dog here would be the only hope of the world."

She looked at the eternal hills in their snow, and made no answer. Presently we turned to our duties about the camp.

It was understood that we should stay here for at least two days, to mend our clothing and prepare food for the southern journey. I have said I was not happy at the thought of turning toward that world which I had missed so little. Could the wild freedom of this life have worked a similar spell on her? The next day she came to me as I sat by our meager fireside. Without leading of mine she began a manner of speech until now foreign to her.

"What is marriage, John Cowles?" she asked of me, abruptly, with no preface.

"It is the Plan," I answered, apathetically. She pondered for a time.

"Are we, then, only creatures, puppets, toys?"

"Yes," I said to her. "A man is a toy. Love was born before man was created, before animals or plants. Atom, ran to atom, seeking. It was love." She pondered yet a while.

"And what is it, then, John Cowles, that women call 'wrong'?"

"Very often what is right," I said to her, apathetically. "When two love the crime is that they shall not wed. When they do not love, the crime is when they do wed."

"But without marriage," she hesitated, "the home—"

"It is the old question," I said. "The home is built on woman's virtue; but virtue is not the same where there is no tome, no property, where there is no society—it is an artificial thing, born of compromise, and grown stronger by custom of the ages of property-owning man."

I saw a horror come across her eyes.

"What do you say to me, John Cowles? That what a woman prizes is not right, is not good? No, that I shall not think!" She drew apart from me.

"Because you think just as you do, I love you," I said.

"Yet you say so many things. I have taken life as it came, just as other girls do, not thinking. It is not nice, it is not clean, that girls should study over these things. That is not right."

"No, that is not right," said I, dully.

"Then tell me, what is marriage—that one thing a girl dreams of all her life. Is it of the church?"

"It is not of the church," I said.

"Then it is the law."

"It is not the law," I said.

"Then what is it?" she asked. "John Cowles, tell me,