Rain deterred us the following morning, and with a late start and a early camp we did but a half-day’s travel; but another morning found us on the trail in good season, buoyed by the first sunshine since leaving the Beaver River, and in mid-afternoon, traveling behind the hills that line the southern bank of the Susan, we came upon Goose Creek.^[4]  I recognized it at once.  Gilbert had never before been so far into this section of the country, and I was guide now.  We followed down the south bank of Goose Creek, and presently came to the fall over which Goose Creek drops to form its junction with the main stream.  Not far below the fall and opposite Hubbard’s camp, where the Susan runs in a shallow rapid, we made our fording to the north side.  On the riverbank we dropped our packs.

“Do you know the place?” asked the Judge.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Gilbert and I will wait here,” said the Judge, with fine feeling and sympathy.

It was a moment of intense expectation for me.  The mind works curiously upon occasions like this.  The surroundings were as familiar as though I had been absent but a day instead of a decade.  The river spoke with the same voice.  No twig, no tree, no rock had changed.  Time fell from memory.  Ten years were forgotten as years unlived, and I was returning to Hubbard and the camp, which I had left but yesterday.  I knew exactly where the tent stood, and exactly how it looked—just in there among the spruce trees.

During the ten years that had elapsed since I had last seen the place, I had frequently called up pictures of it—the tent, the rock before which it stood, and the surroundings, and for several hours such a picture had been pretty constantly before my vision.  But these pictures had been more or less abstract.  Now, before I actually saw the old campsite or the rock, I saw in vision the whole in minute exactitude.  I stepped quickly toward the spot, without hesitation or uncertainty, as one returning after a short absence to a place he knows intimately and well.  In that brief interval I believe I fully expected to find Hubbard in the tent, as I had left him, and to hear his greeting:

“I’m glad you’re back b’y.  I was lonesome.”

As I beheld the rock and the desolation which surrounded it, I returned to consciousness of the present with a shock, and for a moment was overwhelmed with emotion.  Before the rock lay the bed of spruce boughs, now withered and dry, which I had arranged and upon which Hubbard lay when he died.  By the side of the bed was one of his old worn moccasins, a spool of thread, a small tin can in which he had carried medicines, and an undergarment.   Scattered about were remnants of the tent, and still knotted to trees in the rear were bits of the line which had held the tent in position.  At the base of the rock were the dead embers of Hubbard’s last campfire, so fresh that the previous evening’s rain might have beaten the fire out.  There, too, was the stick upon which our tea pail hung, and alongside it lay two of our camp spoons, probably in the exact spot where Hubbard placed them before he went to his last sleep.

Arrival at Hubbard’s Rock.  Wallace (L), Malone.

Next: Chapter XXXIII: Reliving The Parting