After supper the wagon was partly unloaded, the feather bed laid upon the planks under the wagon roof and spread with blankets. Then Samson sang songs and told stories or played upon the violin to amuse the family. The violin invariably woke the birds in the tree-tops, and some, probably thrushes or warblers or white throated sparrows, began twittering. Now and then one would express his view of the disturbance with a little phrase of song. Often the player paused to hear these musical whispers "up in the gallery," as he was wont to call it.
Often if the others were weary and depressed he would dance merrily around the fire, playing a lively tune, with Sambo glad to lend a helping foot and much noise to the program. If mosquitos and flies were troublesome Samson built smudges, filling their camp with the smoky incense of dead leaves, in which often the flavor of pine and balsam was mingled. By and by the violin was put away and all knelt by the fire while Sarah prayed aloud for protection through the night. So it will be seen that they carried with them their own little theater, church and hotel.
Soon after darkness fell, Sarah and the children lay down for the night, while Samson stretched out with his blankets by the fire in good weather, the loaded musket and the dog Sambo lying beside him. Often the howling of wolves in the distant forest kept them awake, and the dog muttering and barking for hours.
Samson woke the camp at daylight and a merry song was his reveille while he led the horses to their drink.
"Have a good night?" Sarah would ask.
"Perfect!" he was wont to answer. "But when the smudges went out the mosquiters got to peckin' my face."
"Mine feels like a pincushion," Sarah would often answer. "Will you heat up a little water for us to wash with?"
"You better believe I will. Two more hedge hogs last night, but Samba let 'em alone."
Sambo had got his mouth sored by hedge hogs some time before and had learned better than to have any fuss with them.
When they set out in the morning Samson was wont to say to the little lad, who generally sat beside him: "Well, my boy, what's the good word upon Joe would say, parrot like:
"God help us all and make His face to shine upon us."
"Well said!" his father would answer, and so the day's journey began.
Often, near its end, they came to some lonely farmhouse. Always Samson would stop and go to the door to ask about the roads, followed by little Joe and Betsey with secret hopes. One of these hopes was related to cookies and maple sugar and buttered bread and had been cherished since an hour of good fortune early in the trip and encouraged by sundry good-hearted women along the road. Another was the hope of seeing a baby—mainly, it should be said, the hope of Betsey. Joe's interest was merely an echo of hers. He regarded babies with an open mind, as it were, for the opinions of his sister still had some weight with him, she being a year and a half older than he, but babies invariably disappointed him, their capabilities being so restricted. To be sure, they could make quite a noise, and the painter was said to imitate it, but since Joe had learned that they couldn't bite he had begun to lose respect for them. Still, not knowing what might happen, he always took a look at every baby.
The children were lifted out of the wagon to stretch their legs at sloughs and houses. They were sure to be close behind the legs of their father when he stood at a stranger's door. Then, the night being near, they were always invited to put their horses in the barn and tarry until next morning. This was due in part to the kindly look and voice of Samson, but mostly to the wistful faces of the little children—a fact unsuspected by their parents. What motherly heart could resist the silent appeal of children's faces or fail to understand it? Those were memorable nights for Sarah and Joe and Betsey. In a letter to her brother the woman said:
"You don't know how good it seemed to see a woman and talk to her, and we talked and talked until midnight, after all the rest were asleep. She let me hold the baby in my lap until it was put to bed. How good it felt to have a little warm body in my arms again and feel it breathing! In all my life I never saw a prettier baby. It felt good to be in a real house and sleep in a soft, warm bed and to eat jelly and cookies and fresh meat and potatoes and bread and butter. Samson played for them and kept them laughing with his stories until bedtime. They wouldn't take a cent and gave us a dozen eggs in a basket and a piece of venison when we went away. Their name is Sanford and I have promised to write to them. They are good Christian folks and they say that maybe they will join us in the land of plenty if we find it all we expect."
They had two rainy, cold days, with a northeast wind blowing and deep mud in the roads. The children complained of the cold. After a few miles' travel they stopped at an old hunter's camp facing a great mossy rock near the road.
"Guess we'll stop here for a visit," said Samson.
"Who we goin' to visit?" Joe asked.
"The trees and the fairies," said his father. "Don't ye hear 'em askin' us to stop? They say the wind is blowin' bad an' that we'd better stop an' make some good weather. They offer us a house and a roof to cover it and some wood to burn. I guess we'll be able to make our own sunshine in a few minutes."
Samson peeled some bark and repaired the roof and, with his flint and tinder and some fat pine, built a roaring fire against the rock and soon had his family sitting, in its warm glow, under shelter. Near by was another rude framework of poles set in crotches partly covered with bark which, with a little repairing, made a sufficient shelter for Pete and Colonel. Down by a little brook a few rods away he cut some balsams and returned presently with his arms full of the fragrant boughs. These he dried in the heat of the fire and spread in a thick mat on the ground under the lean-to. It was now warm with heat, reflected from the side of the great rock it faced. The light of the leaping flames fell upon the travelers.
"Ye see ye can make yer own weather and fill it with sunshine if ye only know how," said Samson, as he sat down and brushed a coal out of the ashes and swiftly picked it up with his fingers and put it into the bowl of his clay pipe. "Mother and I read in a book that the wood was full o' sunlight all stored up and ready for us to use. Ye just set it afire and out comes the warm sunlight for days like this. God takes pretty good care of us—don't He?"
The heat of other fires had eaten away a few inches of the base of the rock. Under its overhang some one had written with a black coal the words "Bear Valley Camp." On this suggestion the children called for a bear story, and lying back on the green mat of boughs, Samson told them of the great bear of Camel's Hump which his father had slain, and many other tales of the wilderness.
They lived two days in this fragrant, delightful shelter until the storm had passed and the last of their corn meal had been fed to the horses. They were never to forget the comfort and the grateful odors of their camp in Bear Valley.
On a warm, bright day in the sand country after the storm they came to a crude, half finished, frame house at the edge of a wide clearing. The sand lay in drifts on one side of the road. It had evidently moved in the last wind. A sickly vegetation covered the field. A ragged, barefooted man and three scrawny, ill clad children stood in the dooryard. It was noon-time. A mongrel dog, with a bit of the hound in him, came bounding and barking toward the wagon and pitched upon Sambo and quickly got the worst of it. Sambo, after much experience in self-defense, had learned that the best way out of such trouble was to seize a leg and hang on. This he did. The mongrel began to yelp. Samson lifted both dogs by the backs of their necks, broke the hold of Sambo and tossed aside the mongrel, who ran away whining.
"That reminds me of a bull that tackled a man over in Vermont," said he. "The man had a club in his hand. He dodged and grabbed the bull's tail and beat him all over the lot. As the bull roared, the man hollered: 'I'd like to know who began this fuss anyway.'"
The stranger laughed.
"Is that your house?" Samson asked.
The man stepped nearer and answered in a low, confidential tone:
"Say,