CHAPTER V
ORDERS TO MOVE ON
IF you have ever penetrated deep into some shadowy forest with never the feel of a man-made trail under foot, if you have known that unique thrill which comes with the sensation of being utterly alone save for the tall trees and silent mountains, the sunlight and bickering waters, if there has come to you the grateful emotion born of the thought that perhaps, except for your own, no human foot has ever come into this particular sequestered spot since old time was in swaddling clothes, if just then a chance glance at a creek's edge showed you an old fragment of newspaper or an empty and rusting sardine can … then could you understand and sympathetically condone the first rush of disgust with the situation which filled Steele's heart. Long and across many miles had this hidden, little trodden corner of the big world called to him, long had he enjoyed in anticipation those first few idle hours alone with the solitude. This late afternoon had found him in tune with his surroundings; he was "ready for it." And, though a man usually as slow to anger as he was quick to mirth, for the moment he yielded to a wrath as instinctive as it was illogical.
The two men came on. They were big, rough looking fellows who might have been timber jacks, pick and shovel men strayed from Camp Corliss, or any other undesirable representatives of the human species for
54
