The wood-cutter's wife was there. We were the one excitement in her
long months of isolation. I can still see her rather pathetic face as
she showed me the lace she was making, the one hundred and one ways in
which she tried to fill her lonely hours.
All through the world there are such women, shut away from their kind,
staying loyally with the man they have chosen through days of aching
isolation. That woman had children. She could not take them into the
wilderness with her, so they were in a town, and she was here in the
forest, making things for them and fretting about them and longing for
them. There was something tragic in her face as she watched us mount to
go on.
We were to reach Marblemont that day and there to leave our horses.
After they had rested and recovered, Dan Devore was to take them back
over the range again, while we went on to civilization and a railroad.
We promised the wood-cutter to send the oats back with the outfit; and
when we sent them, we sent at the same time some magazines to that
lonely wife and mother on the Skagit.
Late in the afternoon, we emerged from the forest.
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