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From deeper in the thicket came the sudden crash of a heavy body, and with it the chuckling notes of a porcupine, and a hoo-hoo-hoo-ee of startled inquiry that at first Peter took for a human voice. And again he lay shivering close to the foot-deep carpet of needles under him, while his heart thumped against his ribs, and his whiskers stood out in mortal fear.
He was forced to remain stationary more than a week, and when he renewed the march the trains were clogged by mud foot-deep. The Commissioners reached Camp Scott on the 29th of May. The President's Proclamation had been received the day before. With the exception of a few persons who were prepared for such a document by reflection on Mr. Kane's mission, everybody was astonished at its purport.
Transport columns had an unhappy time: the Hebron road was showing many signs of wear, and it was a long journey for lorries from Beersheba when the retaining walls were giving way and a foot-deep layer of mud invited a skid every yard.
The buckskin was not used to such feats, and when Red's weight was thrown to the side for the reach he missed his stride, struck his feet together, and down they went, while the foot-deep dust sprang into the air like an explosion. Miss Mattie rushed to the scene of the accident, followed by everybody. Young Lettis, equally frightened, was close beside her. "Oh, Will! Are you killed?" she cried.
It was immediately given over for the personal use of the ladies, who were delighted with the cozy bunks and foot-deep mattresses of aromatic spruce needles. The men, as much from preference as from necessity, spread their blankets under the open sky.
There something told him he would find safety. A hunter would have known that he was wounded unto death as he dragged himself out into the foot-deep snow of the lake. A dozen rods out from the tamaracks he stopped, head thrown high, long ears pitched forward, and nostrils held half to the sky. It is in this attitude that a moose listens when he hears a trout splash three-quarters of a mile away.
Peter Riney was opening a pit of potatoes in the big garden, shovelling aside the foot-deep mould, and tearing off the inner covering of yellow straw which seemed strange and unnatural, somehow, when suddenly revealed in its glistening dryness, beneath the moist dark earth. Little crumbles of mould trickled down, in among the flattened shining straws.
The trails were simply awful, with the last of the frost coming out of the ground and mother earth a foot-deep sponge of engulfing stickiness. All the world seemed turned to mud.
It is recounted that the rumbling carts, sinking deep in mud and plowing through foot-deep dust beneath the palace windows, annoyed the monarch so much that he instituted what must have been the first city paving work on record, and commanded that all the chief thoroughfares passing near the Louvre should be paved with cobbles. This was real municipal improvement.
'He's gone, said the third man after a pause. 'Lift him clear. The two men dropped the stretcher, stooped and fumbled, lifted the limp figure, laid it down a few yards away from the line, and vanished in the direction of another call. Sapper Duffy was alone with his spade and a foot-deep square hole and the hissing bullets.
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