When the Garveys became possessed of so many dollars that they
faltered in computing them, the deficiencies of life on Blackjack
began to grow prominent. Pike began to talk of new shoes, a hogshead
of tobacco to set in the corner, a new lock to his rifle; and, leading
Martella to a certain spot on the mountain-side, he pointed out to her
how a small cannon--doubtless a thing not beyond the scope of their
fortune in price--might be planted so as to command and defend the
sole accessible trail to the cabin, to the confusion of revenues and
meddling strangers forever.
But Adam reckoned without his Eve. These things represented to him
the applied power of wealth, but there slumbered in his dingy cabin an
ambition that soared far above his primitive wants. Somewhere in Mrs.
Garvey's bosom still survived a spot of femininity unstarved by twenty
years of Blackjack. For so long a time the sounds in her ears had
been the scaly-barks dropping in the woods at noon, and the wolves
singing among the rocks at night, and it was enough to have purged her
of vanities. She had grown fat and sad and yellow and dull. But when
the means came, she felt a rekindled desire to assume the perquisites
of her sex--to sit at tea tables; to buy futile things; to whitewash
the hideous veracity of life with a little form and ceremony.
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