Burned Bridges

He wanted to see her, to talk with her, to make her define her attitude

a little more clearly. Looking back with his mind a great deal less

confused by emotion, he wondered why he had been so dumb, why he had not

managed to convey to her that the things she foresaw as denying them

happiness or even toleration for each other were not a final state in

him, that his ideas and habits and pursuits were in a state of flux that

might lead him anywhere. She had thrown cold water on the flame of his

passion. But he remembered with a glow of happiness that she had kissed

him.

He pondered deeply upon this, wondering much at the singular attraction

this girl held for him, the mystery of that strange quality that drew

him so. He lacked knowledge of the way and power of women. It had never

touched him before. It was indeed as if he had been asleep and had

wakened with a start. He was intensely curious about that, curious to

know why he, who had met nice girls and attractive women by the score,

had come into the North woods to be stirred out of all reason by a slip

of a girl with yellow hair and expressive gray eyes and a precocious

manner of thinking.

He looked forward eagerly to seeing her again. He somehow felt a little

more sure of himself now. He could think of a number of things he wished

to ask her, of ideas he wanted to expand into speech. The hurt of her

blank refusal had dulled a little. He could anticipate a keen pleasure

just in seeing her.

In the morning he set about outfitting. He had come down from Porcupine

with dogs. He had seen dog teams bearing the goods and chattels of

innumerable natives. He perceived the essential usefulness of dogs and

snowshoes and toboggans in that boundless region of snow. Canoes when

the ice went out, dogs and toboggans when winter came again to lock

tight the waterways. So during his stay at Porcupine he had accepted the

gift of a dog from a Cree, traded tobacco for another, and he and Lamont

had whiled away the long evenings in making two sets of harness and a

small toboggan. A four-dog team will haul a sizable load. Two would move

all the burden of food and gear that he had in his possession. He had

learned painfully to walk upon snowshoes--enough so that he was over the

poignant ache in the calf of the leg which the North calls mal de

racquette. Altogether he felt himself fully equal to fare into the

wilderness alone. Moreover he had none of that intangible dread of the

wilderness which had troubled him when he first came to Lone Moose.