Burned Bridges

From the direction of the slough two shots sounded, presently followed

by two more. Then the gleeful yipping of Tommy's Ashe's retriever, and

Tommy's stentorian encouragement: "That's the boy. Fetch him."

Close upon this Mr. Thompson's up-pricked ear detected another voice,

one that immediately set up in him an involuntary eagerness of

listening, a clear, liquid voice that called: "Oh, Tommy, there's another wounded one, swimming away. Quick!"

Pow! Tommy's twelve-gauge cracked again. The two voices called

laughingly back and forth across the slough, mingled with the excited

barking of the brown dog as he retrieved the slaughtered ducks. After a

time silence fell. Thompson's nose detected an odor. He turned hastily

to his stove. But he had listened too long. The biscuits in his oven

were smoking.

That did not matter greatly in itself. It was merely one of a long

procession of culinary disasters. He could not, somehow, contrive to

prepare food in the simple manner of Mike Breyette's instructions. If

the biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly

soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of

the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out

right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to

swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in the name of food.

He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now. His real work, his essential

labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the

same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone

Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he

lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the

intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which

they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to

any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was

vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that

he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in

a house where there is neither food nor drink.

Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all

things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or

even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none

the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned

pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away

from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock

of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the

needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,--and he

could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but

chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is

for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he

desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to

lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him

with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.