It was a July morning without flaw, blue and green and golden, and brooded upon by the full-hearted peace of ripe summer. Bedding and kitchen supplies were put in two big bundles arranged pannier fashion on the black horse, and firmly lashed in place by a pair of plow lines.
"Why don't you put it up on his back?" Callista asked them, coming out with her eight month's old baby, all in order for the journey.
"That's to leave place for you to ride part of the time," Lance 255 told her. "It's a right smart ways we're going, and that son of yours is tol'able heavy, and half the time you won't let me tote him."
So they set off, Sylvane walking ahead at Satan's bridle, whistling and singing by turns, Lance with his banjo on his back, Callista at first carrying the boy because he wanted her to, and afterward relinquishing him to Lance or Sylvane. The route lay over springy leaf-mold, under great trees for the most part, leaving the main road, and taking merely an occasional cattle-path, while always it wound upward. After a time, the timber became more scattered, and from going forward under a leafage that shut out the rising sun, there were patches of open, meadow-like grasses, called by the mountain dweller, balds, interspersed with groups of cedars and oaks. The last mile was up the dry bed of Caney, and it consisted of a scramble over great boulders, where only a mountain-bred horse might keep his footing. Turning suddenly and scaling a bank that was like a precipice, one came on Lance's find, a cup-like hollow between the cleft portions of a mountain peak, where the great gray rocks lay strewn thick, the ferns grew waist high, and the trickling spring-branch was so blue-cold that it made your teeth ache to drink of it even on a summer's day.
The three stood for a moment silent, on the edge of the miniature valley, studying its perfections with loving eyes; the mountaineer leads all others in passionate admiration for the 256 beauty of his native highlands.
"Oh, Lance!" Callista said at length, very softly. "You never told me it was as sightly as all this."
"Couldn't," murmured Lance, pleased to the soul. "I ain't got the words by me."
Sylvane helped them unpack, waited for a hasty dinner for himself and Satan; then having agreed to return for them at the end of a week, he went back, leading his black horse, looking with boyish envy over his shoulder at the happy little group in the hidden pocket of the hills. When he was out of sight of them, he could still see the blue smoke of their camp fire rising clear and high, and stopping to mount Satan, when the trail became fit for it, he hearkened a moment, and thought he heard the sound of the banjo.
It was Lance who made the camp, deftly, swiftly; Callista looked after her baby and explored their new domain, moving about, girlish, light-footed, singing to herself, so that the eyes of the man bending over his task followed her eagerly. Two great boulders leaning together made them a rock house. Lance soon had a chimney up, of loose stones to be sure, but drawing sufficiently to keep the smoke out of your eyes unless the wind was more perverse than a summer breeze is apt to be. That evening they ate a supper of the cooked food they had brought and rested as the first pair might have done in Eden, sleeping 257 soundly on their light, springy couch of tender hemlock tips. But next day Lance fished in the little stream and came up with a wonderful catch of tiny silver-sided, rainbow trout, cleaned and laid in a great leaf-cup ready for the frying pan.
"Lance, oh Lance!—ain't it too bad?" Callista greeted him from the fire where she had her cornbread nearly ready to accompany his fish. "I believe in my soul we've come clean over here and forgot the salt—the salt! I put some in my meal, or the bread wouldn't be fit to eat. Do you reckon the meat fryings will make your fish taste all right? No—of course it won't. I'm mighty sorry. Looks like that is certainly the prettiest fish I ever saw in my life, and they're so good right fresh from the water."