He kept his seat while Mike tied the bow to a birch trunk with a bit of
rope. He knew that they expected to land him at his destination before
evening fell. This did not impress him as a destination. He did not know
what Lone Moose would be like. The immensity of the North had left him
rather incredulous. Nothing in the North, animate or inanimate,
corresponded ever so little to his preconceived notions of what it would
be like. His ideas of the natives had been tinctured with the flavor of
Hiawatha and certain Leatherstocking tales which he had read with a
sense of guilt when a youngster. He had really started out with the
impression that Lone Moose was a collection of huts and tents about a
log church and a missionary house. The people would be simple and
high-minded, tillers of the soil in summer, trappers of fur in winter,
humble seekers after the Light he was bringing. But he was not a fool,
and he had been compelled to forego that illusion. Then he had surmised
that Lone Moose might be a replica of Fort Pachugan. MacLeod had partly
disabused his mind of that.
But he still could not keep out of his mind's eye a somewhat hazy
picture of Lone Moose as a group of houses on the bank of a stream, with
Indians and breeds--no matter how dirty and unkempt--going impassively
about their business, an organized community, however rude.
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