Читать книгу The Ark of 1803. A Story of Louisiana Purchase Times онлайн

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The one window opened a crack and something struck Jimmy on the head. It was a powder horn. Then his gun came rattling after it, and the window shut decisively. Jimmy picked up his gun.

“I hope Uncle Amasa don’t calculate to come back to-night,” he reflected. “I guess Ma didn’t like his going off like that to the fire and leaving the cabin unprotected. But la, it would be a brave Indian that would break into Ma’s cabin when she didn’t want him to.”

With his gun in his arm he felt himself again. He struck briskly into the woods, following paths as familiar to him as the roads about the settlement. Nothing stirred the deep loneliness—but he was not lonely. He crossed the Ayers’ tract, the four hundred acres belonging to the Lincolns, the Hoyts’ improved lands, crossed a branch of the river and entered the unbroken timber. There was almost no wind. The frosty air still gave no hint of morning, and the occasional breaks in the trees showed a sky brilliantly crowded with stars.

The anger died slowly out of him. If he had turned back it would have flamed up again; but, as he drew steadily away from the scene of his wounded pride, his wrongs seemed to be left behind and he felt only the drowsiness of his long tramp. He would have been glad to crawl into the hollow of a rotten tree, but he was too wary, and he held on, crunching through the untrodden snow, his feet moving in a sort of rhythm with the unformed thoughts that kept moving in his brain. The dim knowledge that it was good to be away from other human beings, who disapproved of his restlessness—for Jimmy’s outbreaks were always the result of restlessness—that it would be good to creep a little further into the wilderness, where the white men had never yet trod, and that this was what made Uncle Amasa dwell wistfully on the past when he had been a pioneer in the territory—all this and more slipped through his thoughts. The spell of the wilderness was on him, and he looked forward to the days he would spend in the hut, watching his traps and collecting pelts for the ark to take down to New Orleans. His face grew hard again as the thought of the ark crossed his mind. His fist clenched.