“Seems I can’t be myself these days,” he said. “I forgot that you might be hungry after your tramp about to-night. Set up, Bill, and have a bit of turkey.”
He placed the carcass of a cold fowl on the table, and from the milk-house outside fetched bread and butter. Paisley drew his stool up to the table.
“Ain’t you eatin’?” he asked.
“Not hungry,” answered Boy. “Seems I ain’t like anythin’ I used to be any more. All day long I’ve been thinkin’ about a lot of no-count things that happened years ago. Little things I’ve done and seen here in the bush. How I tramped with Davie ’cross the ridges and down through the wild blackberry patches. Why, Bill, it seems, some nights, when I’m lyin’ awake, that I can see everythin’ just as plain as I saw it then. Last night I was listenin’ to the rushes sweepin’ against my skiff. My oar was poked in a bog and my boat-painter was tied to it. I was trollin’ with a live minnie, and the creek was a clear bottle-green. The pond-lily roots lay there six feet below me, and the bass swam in and out—you know how they did before the mill was up, Bill?”
Paisley nodded and looked back over his shoulder. His mouth was full of turkey and bread.
“And as they’ll do again,” he asserted in muffled tones of conviction.
“I was gettin’ strikes and playin’ bass,” smiled Boy; “playin’ and landin’ ’em and enjoyin’ it all. Davie was there, and Gloss was there. We all talked and laughed together. It was real, I tell you, Bill. It wasn’t a dream, ’cause my eyes was wide open. That sort of thing scares me. I don’t understand it.”
Paisley put his hand on Boy’s knee.
“I know what’s doin’ it all,” he said. “I know just what’s doin’ it all. You’re worryin’. That’s what you’re doin’. You shouldn’t, ’cause Hallibut and his gang ain’t goin’ to get this bush, not by a danged sight. You’re thinkin’ that you won’t fish no more like you used to; that you and Davie won’t tramp together no more in your own little world. But you will. You’ll always own it, Boy. You take old Bill’s word for it, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry yourself sick about.”
“Somehow I feel sort of helpless,” sighed Boy. “Maybe I’m a coward, ’cause I feel like hidin’; only the fight in me makes me keep to the open. You’ve seen a young partridge when you walked upon him unexpected-like. The little beggar just grabs a leaf and turns over on his back, holdin’ the leaf over him. You and me know where he is, because we see that leaf movin’ after a time; but nobody who ain’t a Bushwhacker could find him, Bill.”