Page:The Cabin at the Trail's End.djvu/32

down she floats ter the ports in Chiny," said Uncle Adzi.

The stars blinked between patchy scudding clouds before the girls finished the dishes to the liking of Martha, who was engaged in assembling the buffalo robes and blankets on the beds of fragrant fir boughs that the men and boys gathered from the near-by woods. The coyotes began their dismal howling and John stirred up the smoldering fire and gathered pitch to replenish it through the night.

"John," Martha asked her husband as they lay looking up at the sky, "are there glass windows in the settlement? I want to have white curtains in the cabin. Seems like white curtains and a rocking-chair and a few books on a shelf make a home out of any kind of a rough cabin. Of course right at first it won't matter so much; we'll be so busy we won't have time to notice. But I'm going to have white curtains. I've saved a pair of the linen sheets that Grandmother Shields wove for my dower. You didn't know I had them, did you?"

John, between sleeping and waking, muttered something unintelligible, then roused and said; "I saw a few windows; one of the frame houses had 'em; but I'll get glass for you, honey, as soon as a shipment comes 'around the Horn.'" Then he lapsed again; a man who has worked hard all day is likely to fail in holding up his end of an after-retiring conversation.

But Martha continued: "You know, John, I didn't say a word when we threw out the feather beds back on the Sweetwater, and I let my little box of keep-