like the silver ringing of the bell
at a mass.

I wish I could do it.

At noon that day in the Skagit Valley, we found our first civilization,
a camp where a man was cutting cedar blocks for shingles. He looked
absolutely astounded when our long procession drew in around his shanty.
He meant only one thing to us; he meant oats. If he had oats, we were
saved. If he had no oats, it meant again long hours of traveling with
our hungry horses.

He had a bag of oats. But he was not inclined, at first, to dispose of
them, and, as a matter of fact, he did not sell them to us at all. When
we finally got them from him, it was only on our promise to send back
more oats. Money was of no use to him there in the wilderness; but oats
meant everything.

Thirty-one horses we drove into that little bit of a clearing under the
cedar trees, perhaps a hundred feet by thirty. Such wild excitement as
prevailed among the horses when the distribution of oats began, such
plaintive whinnying and restless stirring! But I think they behaved much
better than human beings would have under the same circumstances. And at
last each was being fed--such a pathetically small amount, too, hardly
more than a handful apiece, it seemed. In his eagerness, the Little
Boy's horse breathed in some oats, and for a time it looked as though he
would cough himself to death.

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