“I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue.
We can go all the way by motor boat—flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude.”
“No, sir!
Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor?
Not on your life!
You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell ‘em what you want for eats.
I’ll be ready soon ‘s you are.”
“Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt.
It’s a long walk.
“Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?”
“Oh, no, I guess I can do it.
But I haven’t tramped that far for sixteen years.
Most of the sports go by boat.
But I can do it if you say so—I guess.”
Joe walked away in sadness.
Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned.
He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories.
But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail.
He persistently kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally.
But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch.
He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating.
When he stopped to rest he chuckled,
“Guess we’re hitting it up pretty good for a couple o’ old birds, eh?”
“Uh-huh,” admitted Joe.
“This is a mighty pretty place.
Look, you can see the lake down through the trees.
I tell you, Joe, you don’t appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the time!
I wish I knew the woods like you do.
Say, what’s the name of that little red flower?”
Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully
“Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink Flower.”
Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding.
He was submerged in weariness.
His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes.
He was too tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond.
When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect.
He lay beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt sleep running through his veins.
He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned.
He sat on a stump and felt virile.
“Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money?
Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim ‘way back in the woods and be independent of people?”
For the first time Joe brightened.
He chewed his cud a second, and bubbled,
“I’ve often thought of that!
If I had the money, I’d go down to Tinker’s Falls and open a swell shoe store.”
After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight.
Babbitt sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos.
Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles.
He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life.
Then he was in Zenith.