melting of snow in the Sierras which had brought this volume down the
canyon. But was there more still to come?
"Have you anything like a long pole or stick in the cabin?"
"Nary," said the girl, opening her big eyes and shaking her head with
a simulation of despair, which was, however, flatly contradicted by her
laughing mouth.
"Nor any cord or twine?" he continued.
She handed him a ball of coarse twine.
"May I take a couple of these hooks?" he asked, pointing to some rough
iron hooks in the rafters, on which bacon and jerked beef were hanging.
She nodded. He dislodged the hooks, greased them with the bacon rind,
and affixed them to the twine.
"Fishin'?" she asked demurely.
"Exactly," he replied gravely.
He threw the line in the water. It slackened at about six feet,
straightened, and became taut at an angle, and then dragged. After one
or two sharp jerks he pulled it up. A few leaves and grasses were caught
in the hooks. He examined them attentively.
"We're not in the creek," he said, "nor in the old overflow. There's no
mud or gravel on the hooks, and these grasses don't grow near water."
"Now, that's mighty cute of you," she said admiringly, as she knelt
beside him on the platform. "Let's see what you've caught. Look yer!"
she added, suddenly lifting a limp stalk, "that's 'old man,' and thar
ain't a scrap of it grows nearer than Springer's Rise,--four miles from
home."
"Are you sure?" he asked quickly.
"Sure as pop! I used to go huntin' it for smellidge."
"For what?" he said, with a bewildered smile.
"For this,"--she thrust the leaves to his nose and then to her own
pink nostrils; "for--for"--she hesitated, and then with a mischievous
simulation of correctness added, "for the perfume."
He looked at her admiringly. For all her five feet ten inches, what
a mere child she was, after all! What a fool he was to have taken a
resentful attitude towards her! How charming and graceful she looked,
kneeling there beside him!
"Tell me," he said suddenly, in a gentler voice, "what were you laughing
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