hay gathered thick
on the meadow. When Bill judged that the supply reached twenty tons,
he built a rude sled with a rack on it, and hauled in the hay with a
saddle horse.

"Amen!" said Bill, when he had emptied the rack for the last time, and
the hay rose in a neat stack. "That's another load off my mind. I can
build a cabin and a stable in six feet of snow if I have to, but there
would have been a slim chance of haying once a storm hit us. And the
caballos need a grubstake for the winter worse than we do, because they
can't eat meat. _We_ wouldn't go hungry--there's moose enough to feed
an army ranging in that low ground to the south."

"There's everything that one needs, almost, in the wilderness, isn't
there?" Hazel observed reflectively. "But still the law of life is
awfully harsh, don't you think, Bill? Isolation is a terrible thing
when it is so absolutely complete. Suppose something went wrong?
There's no help, and no mercy--absolutely none. You could die here by
inches and the woods and mountains would look calmly on, just as they
have looked on everything for thousands of years. It's like prison
regulations. You _must_ do this, and you _must_ do that, and there's
no excuse for mistakes. Nature, when you get close to her, is so
inexorable."

Bill eyed her a second. Then he put his arms around her, and patted
her hair tenderly.

"Is it getting on your nerves already, little person?" he asked.
"Nothing's going to go wrong. I've been in wild country too often to
make mistakes or get careless. And those are the two crimes for which
the North--or any wilderness--inflicts rather serious penalties. Life
isn't a bit harsher here than in the human ant heaps. Only everything
is more direct; cause and effect are linked up close. There are no
complexities. It's all done in the open, and if you don't play the
game according to the few simple rules you go down and out. That's all
there is to it. There's no doctor in the next block, nor a grocer to
take your order over the phone, and you can't run out to a cafe and
take dinner with a friend. But neither is the air swarming with
disease germs, nor are there malicious gossips to blast you with their
tongues, nor rent and taxes to pay every time you turn around. Nor am
I at the mercy of a job. And what does the old, settled country do to
you when you have neither money nor job? It treats you worse than the
worst the North can do; for, lacking the pri