know."
"Very well. Take this to the manager." He addressed the letter, and,scrawling a few hieroglyphics on a memorandum-tag, tore it off, andhanded it with the letter to the boy.
An hour later he stood in the manager's office. "The next number ispretty well made up," he said, carelessly, "and I think of taking a dayor two off."
"Certainly," said the manager. "It will do you good. Where do you thinkyou'll go?"
"I haven't quite made up my mind."
CHAPTER II
"Hullo!" said Jack Hamlin.
He had halted his mare at the edge of an abrupt chasm. It did not appearto be fifty feet across, yet its depth must have been nearly twohundred to where the hidden mountain-stream, of which it was the banks,alternately slipped, tumbled, and fell with murmuring and monotonousregularity. One or two pine-trees growing on the opposite edge, loosenedat the roots, had tilted their straight shafts like spears over theabyss, and the top of one, resting on the upper branches of a sycamore afew yards from him, served as an aerial bridge for the passage of a boyof fourteen to whom Mr. Hamlin's challenge was addressed.
The boy stopped midway in his perilous transit, and, looking down uponthe horseman, responded, coolly, "Hullo, yourself!"
"Is that the only way across this infernal hole, or the one you preferfor exercise?" continued Hamlin, gravely.
The boy sat down on a bough, allowing his bare feet to dangle over thedizzy depths, and critically examined his questioner. Jack had on thisoccasion modified his usual correct conventional attire by a tastefulcombination of a vaquero's costume, and, in loose white bullion-fringedtrousers, red sash, jacket, and sombrero, looked infinitely more dashingand picturesque than his original. Nevertheless, the boy did not reply.Mr. Hamlin's pride in his usual ascendency over women, children, horses,and all unreasoning animals was deeply nettled. He smiled, however, andsaid, quietly,--
"Come here, George Washington. I want to talk to you."
Without rejecting this august yet impossible title, the boy presentlylifted his feet, and carelessly resumed his passage across thechasm until, reaching the sycamore, he began to let himself downsquirrel-wise, leap by leap, with an occasional trapeze swinging frombough to bough, dropping at last easily to the ground. Here he appearedto be rather good-looking, albeit the sun and air had worked a miracleof brown tan and freckles on his exposed surfaces, until the mottling ofhis oval cheeks looked like a polished bird's egg. Indeed, it struck Mr.Hamlin that he was as intensely a part of that sylvan seclusion asthe hidden brook that murmured, the brown velvet shadows that lay liketrappings on the white flanks of his horse, the quivering heat, and thestinging spice of bay. Mr. Hamlin had vague ideas of dryads and fauns,but at that moment would have bet something on the chances of theirsurvival.
"I did not hear what you said just now, general," he remarked, withgreat elegance of manner, "but I know from your reputation that it couldnot be a lie. I therefore gather that there IS another way across."
The boy smiled; rather, his very short upper lip apparently vanishedcompletely over his white teeth, and his very black eyes, which showed agreat deal of the white around them, danced in their orbits.
"But YOU couldn't find it," he said, slyly.
"No more could you find the half-dollar I dropped just now, unless Ihelped you."
Mr. Hamlin, by way of illustration, leaned deeply over his left stirrup,and pointed to the ground. At the same moment a bright half-dollarabsolutely appeared to glitter in the herbage at the point of hisfinger. It was a trick that had always brought great pleasure and profitto his young friends, and some loss and discomfiture of wager to hisolder ones.
The boy picked up the coin: "There's a dip and a level crossing about amile over yer,"--he pointed,--"but it's through the woods, and they'rethat high with thick bresh."
"With what?"
"Bresh," repeated the boy; "THAT,"--pointing to a few fronds of brackengrowing in the shadow of the sycamore.
"Oh! underbrush?"
"Yes; I said 'bresh,'" returned the boy, doggedly. "YOU might getthrough, ef you war spry, but not your hoss. Where do you want to go,anyway?"
"Do you know, George," said Mr. Hamlin, lazily throwing his rightleg over the horn of his saddle for greater ease and deliberation inreplying, "it's very odd, but that's just what I'D like to know. Now,what would YOU, in your broad statesmanlike views of things generally,advise?"
Quite convinced of the stranger's mental unsoundness, the boy glancedagain at his half-dollar, as if to make sure of its integrity, pocketedit doubtfully, and turned away.
"Where are you going?" said Hamlin, resuming his seat with the agilityof a circus-rider, and spurring forward.
"To Green Springs, where I live, two miles over the ridge on the farslope,"--indicating the direction.
"Ah!" said Jack, with thoughtful gravity. "Well, kindly give my love toyour sister, will you?"
"George Washington didn't have no sister," said the boy, cunningly.
"Can I have been mistaken?" said Hamlin, lifting his hand to hisforehead with grieved accents. "Then it seems YOU have. Kindly give hermy love."
"Which one?" asked the boy, with a swift glance of mischief. "I've gotfour."
"The one that's like you," returned Hamlin, with prompt exactitude."Now, where's the 'bresh' you spoke of?"
"Keep along the edge until you come to the log-slide. Foller that, andit'll lead you into the woods. But ye won't go far, I tell ye. When youhave to turn back, instead o' comin' back here, you kin take the trailthat goes round the woods, and that'll bring ye out into the stage roadag'in near the post-office at the Green Springs crossin' and the newhotel. That'll be war ye'll turn up, I reckon," he added, reflectively."Fellers that come yer gunnin' and fishin' gin'rally do," he concluded,with a half-inquisitive air.
"Ah?" said Mr. Hamlin, quietly shedding the inquiry. "Green SpringsHotel is where the stage stops, eh?"
"Yes, and at the post-office," said the boy. "She'll be along heresoon," he added.
"If you mean the Santa Cruz stage," said Hamlin, "she's here already. Ipassed her on the ridge half an hour ago."
The boy gave a sudden start, and a quick uneasy expression passed overhis face. "Go 'long with ye!" he said, with a forced smile: "it ain'ther time yet."
"But I SAW her," repeated Hamlin, much amused. "Are you expectingcompany? Hullo! Where are you off to? Come back."
But his companion had already vanished in the thicket with theundeliberate and impulsive act of an animal. There was a momentaryrustle in the alders fifty feet away, and then all was silent. Thehidden brook took up its monotonous murmur, the tapping of a distantwoodpecker became suddenly audible, and Mr. Hamlin was again alone.
"Wonder whether he's got parents in the stage, and has been playingtruant here," he mused, lazily. "Looked as if he'd been up to somedevilment, or more like as if he was primed for it. If he'd been alittle older, I'd have bet he was in league with some road-agents towatch the coach. Just my luck to have him light out as I was beginningto get some talk out of him." He paused, looked at his watch, andstraightened himself in his stirrups. "Four o'clock. I reckon I might aswell try the woods and what that imp calls the 'bresh;' I may strike ashanty or a native by the way."
With this determination, Mr. Hamlin urged his horse along the fainttrail by the brink of the watercourse which the boy had just indicated.He had no definite end in view beyond the one that had brought him theday before to that locality--his quest of the unknown poetess. His cluewould have seemed to ordinary humanity the faintest. He had merelynoted the provincial name of a certain plant mentioned in the poem, andlearned that its habitat was limited to the southern local range; whileits peculiar nomenclature was clearly of French Creole or Gulf Stateorigin. This gave him a large though sparsely-populated areafor locality, while it suggested a settlement of Louisianians orMississippians near the Summit, of whom, through their native gamblingproclivities, he was professionally cognizant. But he mainly trustedFortune. Secure in his faith in the feminine ch
aracter of that goddess,he relied a great deal on her well-known weakness for scamps of hisquality.
It was not long before he came to the "slide"--a lightly-cut or shallowditch. It descended slightly in a course that was far from straight, attimes diverging to avoid the obstacles of trees or boulders, at timesshaving them so closely as to leave smooth abrasions along their sidesmade by the grinding passage of long logs down the incline. The trackitself was slippery from this,