From the direction of the slough two shots sounded, presently followed
by two more. Then the gleeful yipping of Tommy's Ashe's retriever, and
Tommy's stentorian encouragement: "That's the boy. Fetch him."
Close upon this Mr. Thompson's up-pricked ear detected another voice,
one that immediately set up in him an involuntary eagerness of
listening, a clear, liquid voice that called: "Oh, Tommy, there's another wounded one, swimming away. Quick!"
Pow! Tommy's twelve-gauge cracked again. The two voices called
laughingly back and forth across the slough, mingled with the excited
barking of the brown dog as he retrieved the slaughtered ducks. After a
time silence fell. Thompson's nose detected an odor. He turned hastily
to his stove. But he had listened too long. The biscuits in his oven
were smoking.
That did not matter greatly in itself. It was merely one of a long
procession of culinary disasters. He could not, somehow, contrive to
prepare food in the simple manner of Mike Breyette's instructions. If
the biscuits had not scorched probably they would have been hopelessly
soggy, dismal things compared to the brown discs Mike had turned out of
the same oven. One was as bad as the other. Nothing seemed to work out
right. Nothing ever tasted right. Only a healthy hunger enabled him to
swallow the unsavory messes he concocted in the name of food.
He had been at Lone Moose two weeks now. His real work, his essential
labor in that untilled field, was no farther advanced. He made about the
same progress as a missionary that he made as a cook. In so far as Lone
Moose was concerned he accomplished nothing because, like Archimedes, he
lacked a foothold from which to apply his leverage. He had the
intelligence to perceive that these people had no pressing wants which
they looked to him to supply, that they were apparently impervious to
any message he could deliver. His power to deliver a message was
vitiated by this utter absence of receptivity. He was, and realized that
he was, as superfluous in Lone Moose as sterling silver and cut glass in
a house where there is neither food nor drink.
Also he was no longer so secure in the comfortable belief that all
things work for an ultimate good. He was not so sure that a sparrow, or
even an ordained servant of God, might not fall and the Almighty be none
the wiser. The material considerations which he had always scorned
pressed upon him in an unescapable manner. There was no getting away
from them. Thrown at last upon his own resources he began to take stock
of his needs, his instincts, his impulses, and to compare them with the
needs and instincts and impulses of a more Godless humanity,--and he
could not escape certain conclusions. Faith may move mountains, but
chiefly through the medium of a shovel. When a man is hungry his need is
for food. When he is lonely he craves companionship. When he grieves he
desires sympathy. And the Providence Mr. Thompson had been taught to
lean so hard upon did not chop his wood, cook his meals, furnish him
with congenial society, comfort him when he was sad.