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We climbed steadily for an hour after leaving camp and, when well up on the mountain-side, skirted the base of a huge peak through a dense forest of spruce and low bamboo thickets, emerging upon a steep grassy meadow; this abutted on a sheer rock wall at the upper end, and below ran into a thick evergreen forest.
So he sat tight and waited, and then Teddy Pegram and his dog and his air-gun crept out of the woods with a load of ten birds. They roosted in the spruce firs, you understand, and 'twas as easy to slay them as blackbeetles, for Teddy's eyes, helped by the moon, marked 'em above his head quick enough.
The two men sat down, and while Nicol tore open the dirty envelope, and read his taskmaster's orders, Tough lit a pipe, and watched him out of the corners of his black, restless, wicked eyes. A roar of fury echoes through the primeval forest. It plays amidst the countless aisles of jack-pine. It loses itself in the dense growing tamarack, or dies amidst the softer plumage of spruce.
He had pitched his camp at the edge of a thicket of alder and aspen near a narrow stream of water in a big arroyo. Fifty feet from the camp rose the sloping north wall of the arroyo, with some dwarf spruce trees fringing its edge. Sanderson had taken a look at the section of country visible from the arroyo edge before pitching his camp.
The hemlocks shot out feathery fronds, the spruce spikes of bluish green, the maples shook around red blossoms and then uncurled tiny leaves. The hickories budded in a strange, pale yellow, but the oaks stood sturdy with some of the winter's brown leaves clinging to them. The long farms outside the stockade awoke to new vigor as well.
I don't know whether it was my saying "Germans" to him that explained it, but his sleepiness seemed suddenly to have disappeared, so he asked for the chance to wash and shave; and half an hour later he came down all slicked up and spruce, with a very visible intention of paying court to the lady of the house. Irish, you see, white hairs no obstacle. I could not help laughing.
In the morning the pools would be frozen over, but toward noon the ice under the slanting rays of the sun would melt. The march itself, and the air laden with odors of pine and spruce, and cedar and balsam, was healthful and invigorating. Will felt his chest expand. He knew that his lung power, already good, was increasing remarkably and that his muscles were both growing and hardening.
She went into the tent and Aldous began building a fire where MacDonald's had been drowned out. There was little reason for a fire; but he built it, and for fifteen minutes added pitch-heavy fagots of storm-killed jack-pine and spruce to it, until the flames leapt a dozen feet into the air. Half a dozen times he was impelled to return to the grave and assist MacDonald in his gruesome task.
The leaves are closely arranged in spiral lines. The black spruce is never a very large tree, but the wood is light, elastic and durable, and is valuable in shipbuilding, for making ladders and for shingles. The young shoots are much in demand for making spruce-beer. The white spruce is more slender and tapering, and the bark and leaves are lighter.
He stood still though, and waited to see who was coming that way since travelers on that trail were few enough to be noticeable. In a minute more a fat old squaw rounded the spruce grove and shied off startled when she glimpsed Bud. Bud grunted and started on, and the squaw stepped clear of the faintly defined trail to let him pass.
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