XVII

Wherein Freckles Offers His Life for His Love and Gets a Broken Body

To reach the tree was a more difficult task than McLean had supposed.
The gang could approach nearest on the outside toward the east, but
after they reached the end of the east entrance there was yet a mile
of most impenetrable thicket, trees big and little, and bushes of every
variety and stage of growth. In many places the muck had to be filled to
give the horses and wagons a solid foundation over which to haul heavy
loads. It was several days before they completed a road to the noble,
big tree and were ready to fell it.

When the sawing began, Freckles was watching down the road where it met
the trail leading from Little Chicken's tree. He had gone to the tree
ahead of the gang to remove the blue ribbon. Carefully folded, it now
lay over his heart. He was promising himself much comfort with that
ribbon, when he would leave for the city next month to begin his studies
and dream the summer over again. It would help to make things tangible.
When he was dressed as other men, and at his work, he knew where he
meant to home that precious bit of blue. It should be his good-luck
token, and he would wear it always to keep bright in memory the day on
which the Angel had called him her knight.

How he would study, and oh, how he would sing! If only he could fulfill
McLean's expectations, and make the Angel proud of him! If only he could
be a real knight!

He could not understand why the Angel had failed to come. She had wanted
to see their tree felled. She would be too late if she did not arrive
soon. He had told her it would be ready that morning, and she had said
she surely would be there. Why, of all mornings, was she late on this?

McLean had ridden to town. If he had been there, Freckles would have
asked that they delay the felling, but he scarcely liked to ask the
gang. He really had no authority, although he thought the men would
wait; but some way he found such embarrassment in framing the request
that he waited until the work was practically ended. The saw was out,
and the men were cutting into the felling side of the tree when the Boss
rode in.

His first word was to inquire for the Angel. When Freckles said she
had not yet come, the Boss at once gave orders to stop work on the tree
until she arrived; for he felt that she virtually had located it, and
if she desired to see it felled, she should. As the men stepped back,
a stiff mornin