"Uh-huh," assented Lance. "I 'lowed Sylvane might come to-day, place of Saturday. Anyhow, we'll need something for a bite on 267 the way." And Callista realized that her husband was indeed making the final preparations for their return.
As they sat down either side the frying pan, and Callista lifted the lid from the Dutch oven to take the bread out, they became aware of the sound of scrambling hoofs and parting branches. Whenever there was high water in Caney, this little valley was cut off, it was a retreat unknown, unvisited; the newcomer could be nobody but Sylvane. A moment later the boy made his appearance, clambering over the rocks, leading Satan by a long line.
"I 'lowed you-all wouldn't mind coming back a day sooner," he apologized, as he gratefully seated himself for an addition to his hastily snatched breakfast eaten by candle-light. "They's a feller that the Company has sent up to look over lands, and he's a-buyin' mineral rights—or ruther, gettin' options—on everybody's farms. They'll pay big prices, and Sis' Roxy said I ought to come and tell Lance of it."
The man listened indifferently, but the woman was all aglow. The touch of practical life had dissolved whatever of the gipsy mood Lance's nature had been able to lend hers. She questioned the boy minutely. Lance listening with ill-concealed impatience; and when the subject was exhausted, began to ask him with great particularity concerning her truck patch at home and whether 268 Spotty, the young cow Lance had traded with Squire Ashe for, was doing well in her milk.
In spite of Lance's packing, there was much to do before camp could be struck, and on account of the canned fruit they moved so slowly that noon saw them still in the wilderness, dropping down by the stream's side to eat the snack they had brought with them. They went around by Father Cleaverage's this time, and stopped there, since Callista intended to present a few of her cherished huckleberries to Roxy, and they reached the cabin at the head of Lance's Laurel late in the afternoon.
For some reason which he could not himself have told you, Lance felt strangely wearied and dissatisfied. He looked back to the week past, and admitted that all had gone well; days of fishing and dreaming, evenings under the open sky with the banjo humming, the not unwelcome fire leaping up, and the baby asleep on Callista's lap. Could a man have asked more?
The son of the house had thriven amazingly on it, and this evening he was assuming airs so domineering that his father professed fear of him.
"Look a here, young feller," Lance said, as the big eight-months-old came creeping across the floor and hammered on his knee to be taken up, "you're about to run me out o' the house." He lifted his son on his arm, and, carrying the banjo in the other hand, beyond reach of the clutching, fat fingers, went to the doorstone with them. "Oh, you're your mammy over again," he 269 admonished the baby. "You don't own up to me at all. I wisht I had me a nice gal o' your size, that would admit I was her daddy."
Callista had her supper nearly ready. Growing now, with motherhood, intensely material,—or, as Lance had more than once jokingly declared, a trifle grasping,—the selling of the land to the Company for a big price occupied all her thoughts.
"You'll go over to Squire Ashe's soon in the morning, won't you Lance and see about the land?" she questioned. "Sylvane said the man was stayin' at Ashe's."