They all climbed carefully down on the broad stone where Nelly was standing, and looked over. It was indeed a beautiful fall: not very high,--but all one white foam from top to bottom; and the water fell into a small pool, where the spray had frozen into a great round rim: it looked like frosted silver.
"That"s a pretty silver bowl to catch the water in; ain"t it, now?"
said Mrs. Plummer. "I"d like a drink of it."
"What a queer country this is!" said Mrs. March "here we are walking without any outside wraps on, and almost too warm in the sun; and here is ice all round this pool; and I have seen little thin rims of ice here and there on the brook all the way up."
"It"s just bully," cried Rob. "Say, mamma, I"m going down to drink out of that bowl;" and, before they could stop him, Rob was half way down the precipice. He found it rougher than he thought; and he had more than one good tumble before he got down to the bed of the brook: but he reached it, dipped his drinking-cup into the pool, broke off a big piece of the frozen spray, and with that in one hand, and his drinking-cup in the other, began to climb up again.
This was twice as hard as to go down,--it made Rob puff and pant, and he lost his piece of ice before he had gone many steps,--but he managed to carry the water up, and very much they all enjoyed it.
"It"s the sweetest water I ever tasted," said Mrs. Plummer.
"Yes," said Mrs. March, "it must be, in good part, melted snow water out of the mountains: that is always sweet. This is the brook, no doubt, which runs past our house. You know they said it was close to the brook."
"Oh, splendid!" cried Rob; "oh, mamma, isn"t this a gay country? so much nicer than an old village with streets in it, like Mayfield.
This is some fun."
Mrs. March laughed, but she thought in her heart:
"I hope he"ll always find it fun."
"I don"t think it"s fun, Rob," said Nelly, slowly.
"Why not, Nell?" exclaimed Rob; "why don"t you like it?"
"I do like it," said Nell, earnestly; "I like it better than any thing in all the world; but I don"t think it"s fun. It"s lots better than fun."
"Well, what"d you call it, if you don"t call it fun?" said Rob, in a vexed tone.
Nelly did not answer.
"Why don"t you say?" cried Rob.
"I"m thinking," replied Nelly: "I guess there isn"t any name for it.
I don"t know any."
Just at this moment, they heard the tinkle of bells ahead, and in a second more loud shouts and cries. They walked faster. The wagon had been out of their sight for some time. As they turned a sharp bend in the road now, they saw it; and they saw also another wagon brought to a dead halt in front of it. The wagon which was coming down was loaded high with packages of shingles. It was drawn by six mules. They had bells on their necks, so as to warn people when they were coming. Mr. March and Deacon Plummer had heard these bells, but they had not known what they meant: if they had, they would have drawn off into one of the wider bends in the road, and waited. Now here the two wagons were, face to face, in one of the very worst places in the road, just where it seemed barely wide enough for one wagon alone. The rock rose up straight on one side, and the precipice fell off sharp on the other. To make matters worse, Pumpkinseed, who hated the very sight of a mule, and who did not like the shining of the bright, yellow shingles, began to rear and to plunge. The driver of the mule team sat still, and looked at Mr.
March and the Deacon surlily without speaking. Mr. March and the Deacon looked at him helplessly, and said:--
"What are we going to do now?"
"Didn"t yer hear me a-coming?" growled the man.
"No, sir," said Mr. March, pleasantly: "we are strangers here, and did not know what the bells meant."
At this the man jumped down: he was not so angry, when he found out that they were strangers. He walked down the road a little way, and looked, and shook his head; then he walked back in the direction he had come from; then he came back, and said:--
"There"s nothin" for it, mister, but you"ll have to unharness your team. My mules"ll stand; I"ll help you."
So they took out Pumpkinseed and Fox, and Mr. March led them on ahead. Then Deacon Plummer and the mule-driver pushed the wagon backward down the road till they came to a place where there was a curve in the road, and they could push it up so close to the rock that there was room for another wagon to pa.s.s. There the mule-driver drove his wagon by; and then Mr. March led Fox and Pumpkinseed down, and harnessed them to the wagon again: all this time Mrs. March and Mrs. Plummer and Rob and Nelly stood on the edge of the precipice, wherever they could find a secure place, and holding on to each other. As the mule team started on, the driver called back: "There"s three or four more behind me: you"d better keep a sharp lookout, mister."
"I should think so," exclaimed Deacon Plummer, "this is the perkiest place for teams to pa.s.s in thet ever I got into. I don"t much like the thought o" comin" up and down here with all our teamin"."
"No," said Mrs. March. "I"ll never drive down here as long as I live."
"Never"s a long word, wife," laughed Mr. March. "If we"re going to live in this Pa.s.s, I don"t doubt we shall get so used to this road, we sha"n"t think any thing about it."
The road wound like a snake, turning first one way and then the other, and crossing the brook every few minutes. Sometimes they would be in dark shadow, when they were close to the left-hand hill; and then, in a minute, they would come out again into full sunlight.
"It"s just like going right back again from after sundown to the middle of the afternoon: isn"t it, mamma?" said Nelly. "How queer it feels!"
"Yes," said Mrs. March, "and I do not like the sundown part. I hope our house is not in such a narrow part of the Pa.s.s as this."
Presently they saw a white house a little way ahead, on the right-hand side of the road. A high, rocky precipice rose immediately behind it; and the brook seemed to be running under the house, it was so close to it. The house was surrounded by tall pine and fir trees; and, on the opposite side of the road the hill was so steep and high that already, although it was only three o"clock in the afternoon, the sun had gone down out of sight, and the house was dark and cold. The whole party looked anxiously at this house.
"That can"t be it, can it?" said Mrs. March.
"Oh, no!" said Mr. March; "it isn"t in the least such a house as the photograph showed: but I will stop and ask."
A man was chopping wood a few steps from the house. Mr. March called to him.
"This isn"t Garland"s, is it?"
Instead of replying, the man laid down his axe, and walked slowly out to the road, staring very hard at them all.
"Be you the folks that"s comin" to live to Garland"s?" he said.
"Yes," said the Deacon; "and we hope this isn"t the place; if "tis, we hain"t been told the truth, that"s all."
"Oh, Lor", no," laughed the man. "This ain"t Garland"s; his place"s two mile farther on. That ain"t no great shakes of a place, either,--Garland"s ain"t; but he"s got more land"n we have. There ain"t land enough here to raise a ground mole in. I"m sick on "t."
"You don"t get daylight enough to raise any thing, for that matter,"
said Mr. March; "here it is the middle of the afternoon, by the clock, and past sundown for you."
"I know it," said the man; "but there"s something in the air here which kind o" makes up for every thing. I don"t know how "tis, but we"ve had our healths first rate ever since we"ve lived here. But I"m going to move down to the Springs: it"s too lonesome up here, and there ain"t nothin" to do. Be you goin" into stock?"
"Not much," said Mr. March. "We are only trying an experiment here: we have bought all Garland"s cows."
"Have ye?" said the man. "Well, Garland had some first-rate cattle; but they"re pretty well peaked out now. Cattle gets dreadful poor here, along in March and April: ye"d reelly pity "em. But it"s amazin" how they pick up"s soon"s the gra.s.s comes in June. It don"t seem to hurt "em none to be kinder starved all winter. Come and see us: we"re neighborly folks out"n this country. My wife she"ll be glad to know there"s some wimmen folks in the Pa.s.s. She"s been the only woman here for a year. Garland he bached it: he hadn"t no wife."
Rob and Nelly had listened silently with wide-open eyes and ears to this conversation; but at this last statement Rob"s curiosity got the better of him.
"What is baching it?" said he, as they drove off.
The man laughed.
"Ask your father: he"ll tell you," he said.
"What is it, papa?" said Rob.
"I suppose it is for a man to live all alone, without any wife. You know they call unmarried men "old bachelors," after they get to be thirty or thirty-five. But I never heard the word before."