He smiled at her childish look of bewilderment. "I've been painfully
aware of it for some time back. I've been suffering for food while you
slept."
"Why didn't you get into the basket?"
"How could I, with you on my manly bosom?"
She colored up a little. They had not been married long, evidently. "How
considerate you are!"
They were soon eating a breakfast with the spirit of picnickers.
Occasionally she looked out of the window.
"What a wild country!" she said. He did not emphasize its qualities to
her; rather, he distracted her attention from its desolation.
The train roared round its curves, conforming with the general course of
the river. On every hand were thickening signs of active lumber
industry. They flashed by freight trains loaded with logs or lumber or
ties. Mills in operation grew thicker.
The car echoed with the talk of lumber. A brisk man with a red mustache
was exhibiting a model of a machine to cut certain parts of machinery
out of "two by fours." Another was describing a new shingle-mill he had
just built.
A couple of elderly men, one a German, were discussing the tariff on
lumber. The workmen mainly sat silent.
"It's all so strange!" the young wife said, again and again.
"Yes, it isn't exactly the Lake Shore Drive."
"I like it. I wish I could smell the pines."
"You'll have all the pines you can stand before we get back to Chicago."
"No, sir; I'm going to enjoy every moment of it; and you're going to let
me help, you know--look over papers, and all that. I'm the heiress, you
must remember," she added, wickedly.
"Well, we won't quarrel about that until we see how the legacy turns
out. It may not be worth my time up here. I shall charge you roundly as
your lawyer, depend on that."
The outlook grew more attractive as the train sped on. Old Mosinee rose,
a fine rounded blue shape, on the left.
"Why, there's a mountain! I didn't know Wisconsin had such a mountain as
that."
"Neither did I. This valley is fine. Now, if your uncle's estates only
included that hill!"
The valley made off to the northwest with a bold, large, and dignified
movement. The coloring, blue and silver, purple-brown and bronze-green,
was harmonious with the grouping of lines. It was all fresh and vital,
wholesome and very impressive.
From this point the land grew wilder--that is to say, more primeval.
There was more of Nature and less of man. The scar of the axe was here
and there, but the forest predominated. The ridges of pine foliages
broke against the sky, miles and miles, in splendid sweep.
"This must be lovely in summer," the wife said, again and again, as they
flashed by some lake set among the hills.
"It's fine now," he replied, feeling the thrill of the sportsman. "I'd
like to shoulder a rifle and plunge into those snowy vistas. How it
brings the wild spirit out in a man! Women never feel that delight."
"Oh, yes, we do," she replied, glad that something remained yet
unexplained between them. "We feel just like men, only we haven't the
strength of mind to demand a share of it with you."
"Yes, you feel it at this distance. You'd come back mighty quick the
second night out."
She did not relish his laughter, and so looked away out of the window.
"Just think of it--Uncle Edwin lived here thirty years!"
He forebore to notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all
right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for the year round."
When they came upon Ridgeley, both cried out with delight.
"Oh, what a dear, picturesque little town!" she said.
"Well, well! I wonder how they came to build a town without a row of
battlemented stores?"
It lay among and upon the sharp, low, stumpy pine ridges in haphazard
fashion, like a Swiss village. A small brook ran through it, smothered
here and there in snow. A sawmill was the largest figure of the town,
and the railway station was the centre. There was not an inch of painted
board in the village. Everywhere the clear yellow of the pine flamed
unstained by time. Lumber piles filled all the lower levels near the
creek. Evidently the town had been built along logging roads, and there
was something grateful and admirable in its irregular arrangement. The
houses, moreover, were all modifications of the logging camps; even the
drug store stood with its side to the street. All about were stumps and
fringes of pines, which the lumbermen, for some good reason, had passed
by. Charred boles stood purple-black out of the snow.
It was all green and gray and blue and yellow-white and stern. The sky
was not more illimitable than the rugged forest which extended on every
hand.
"Oh, this is glorious--glorious!" said the wife. "Do I own some of this
town?" she asked, as they rose to go out.
"I reckon you do."
"Oh, I'm so glad!"
As they stepped out on the platform, a large man in corduroy and
wolf-skin faced them like a bandit.
"Hello, Ed!"
"Hello, Jack! Well, we've found you. My wife, Mr. Ridgeley. We've come
up to find out how much you've embezzled," he said, as Ridgeley pulled
off an immense glove to shake hands all round.
"Well, come right over to the hotel. It ain't the Auditorium, but then,
again, it ain't like sleeping outdoors."
As they moved along they heard the train go off, and then the sound of
the saw resumed its domination of the village noises.
"Was the town named after you, or you after the town?" asked Field.
"Named after me. Old man didn't want it named after him; would kill it,"
he said.
Mr. and Mrs. Field found the hotel quite comfortable and the dinner
wholesome. They beamed upon each other.
"It's going to be delightful," they said.
Ridgeley was a bachelor, and made his home at the hotel also. That night
he said: "Now we'll go over the papers and records of your uncle's
property, and then we'll go out and see if the property is all there. I
imagine this is to be a searching investigation."
"You may well think it. My wife is inexorable."
As night fell, the wife did not feel so safe and well pleased. The loud
talking in the office below and the occasional whooping of a crowd of
mill-hands going by made her draw her chair nearer and lay her fingers
in her husband's palm.
He smiled indulgently. "Don't be frightened, my dear. These men are not
half so bad as they sound."