When everything was packed, he turned towards the shack. “Better leave it as it is,” he muttered; “I might come back this way and put in another night.”
As he turned into the woodland path, the bushes parted and a man dressed in tattered khaki emerged. He carried a coil of rope over his shoulder and in his hand a stout cudgel. “Got the time on ye, sir?” he asked. The camper took out a gold watch. “I make it nine o’clock. But I should have thought that you forest men were in no need of watches with the sun shining.” “Oh, ay!” muttered the man in khaki evasively. “Ah, what’s this?” he exclaimed, pointing to the shack. “Sleeping rough? Why, that’s punishable at the magistrates’ court,” he added with a grin. “Not at all,” said the other. “I have my permission, duly signed from Lyndhurst, to camp in the forest, also a licence to fish in the streams, although up to the present I’ve caught nothing but minnows. This is how we camp out West. Saves lugging a tent about.” “Oh,” said the man in khaki, “you be an Amurrican; I thought so, by your twang. What puzzles me,” he continued, “is why you should be tramping about here. Most of the Yankees at Winchester never set foot in the forest. They see it all from the car. But,” with a sneer, “p’raps you can’t afford it?” The American noticed, but answered with a smile: “Why, friend, I could afford it very well, but all my life I have loved open spaces and fresh air, and I like to do things for myself. I am what you might call a cattle-farmer, and have a ranch in the West.”
“Indeed,” said the other, “and how many cattle might ye own?” “Well, I am not sure, anyway,” answered the American, “but I suppose, if things are going all right, that my men have charge of 10,000 head of stock.” “Well, I’m ——,” exclaimed his questioner. “And to think, if you’re worth all that money, you care to sleep on damp ground with a bit of brushwood overhead.”
“I said just now,” laughed the other, “that I’m used to outdoor life. When I came over with my regiment, we were sent to the camp at Winchester. You know that city?” and the other nodded. He did not deem it necessary to say that the last stay he put in there was in the city gaol. “Well, I got interested in this locality, because there seemed room to move in it, as there is at home; and in my spare time I used to come down here and look about me. Then one afternoon when I was sitting in the cathedral, while hundreds of our men, from all over the States, were being taken round in parties to see the sights, I had some talk with a man and a boy who looked in. They were cycling with camping luggage, and were to spend a holiday in the forest. I guess they were some novices, for I went outside to see them off. Never saw such poor, ill-used, overladen bicycles before or since. Afterwards I got my knock in the big push, and they sent me to the hospital at Brockenhurst, where I saw more of the forest. Just now family business is keeping me in London, so I thought I would spend a few days down here, in my own way.”
The man in khaki became effusive. He thrust out a dirty tattered sleeve. “We ought to be pals, mister. See my wound stripes? Wipers, Loos. Been through the lot and glad to be back for good. I suppose you can’t raise a drink for a pore comrade? You gentlemen generally have a whisky-flask on you.”
“No, my friend,” replied the American. “You’ll find no intoxicating liquor in this outfit. I’m a prohibitionist, what you call a teetotaller.” Then, as waves of incredulity, derision, and horror crossed the other’s face, he added: “You’ll find a lot more of us across the Pond. And now, friend,” he continued, “I’ve told you as much about myself as if you were an agister, as I think you call him. Why do you appear, like a jack-in-the-box, and so anxious to know the time?”
“Not much of an agister,” grumbled the man. “Miserable cusses, I calls ’em, interfering with a pore man’s living. I comes from Romsey way, but settled down here since the war. A suspicious lot,” he added surlily. “I drives cattle, carts wood, breaks in horses, and that’s what I’m going to do this morning,” and he held out the rope. “Ah,” said the American, “that reminds me of home. None of my cowboys ride anywhere without a coil hanging to their saddles. They never know when they may want to rope a steer or a mustang.” “Well,” said the man in khaki, “I’ve heer’d tell that the forest people used ropes in the old days, but they never do now.”
While talking, they had reached the edge of the wood, and the road, thick with dust, lay before them. “Well, friend,” said the American, “you’ll be taking the road; I wish you good-day. I am keeping to the forest paths.”
“Why, mister,” said the man with the rope, “you’ll lose yourself.” “Not with a good English ordnance map,” answered the other, taking from his breast pocket a folded map. As he did so, a bulky pocket-book fell to the ground. “Thanks, don’t trouble,” as the man in khaki made a movement, and bending down himself, picked up and restored his property to his pocket.
But the man with the cudgel was not to be shaken off. In spite of the American’s obvious reluctance to have his company, he declared that he had plenty of time and that he would see him a piece of the way. Once started, the intruder on the visitor’s privacy became boastful of his prowess and that of his companions in arms, and began to decry the American forces, but his hearer good-humouredly parried his clumsy onslaughts.