“No, madam,” I answered.
“Well, I wonder! Well, take care of yourself, and when you come back this way stop along with us, and we’ll kill a yearlin’, and I’ll tell you about a coon that used to live under grandfather’s barn.” She actually offered me her hand, which I grasped and shook in a friendly manner, chilled to the very bone with its damp coldness.
Mr. Newty mounted, and asked me if I was ready. Susan stood holding her prancing mustang. To put that girl on her horse after the ordinary plan would have required the strength of Samson or the use of a step-ladder, neither of which I possessed; so I waited for events to develop themselves. The girl stepped to the left side of her horse, twisted one hand in the mane, laying the other upon his haunches, and, crouching for a jump, sailed through the air, alighting upon the sheepskin. The horse reared, and Susan, twisting herself round, came right side up with her knee upon the sheepskin, shouting, as she did so, “I guess you don’t get me off, sir!” I jumped upon Kaweah, and our two horses sprang forward together, Susan waving her hand to her father, and crying, “Come along after, old man!” and to her mother, “Take care of yourself!” which is the Pike County for au revoir! Her mustang tugged at the bit, and bounded wildly into the air. We reached a stream-bank at full gallop, the horses clearing it at a bound, sweeping on over the green floor and under the magnificent shadow of the forest. Newty, following us at an humble trot, slopped through the creek, and when I last looked he had nearly reached the edge of the wood.
I could but admire the unconscious excellence of Susan’s riding, her firm, immovable seat, and the perfect coolness with which she held the fiery horse. This quite absorbed me for five minutes, when she at last broke the silence by the laconic inquiry, “Does yourn buck?” To which I added the reply that he had only occasionally been guilty of that indiscretion. She then informed me that the first time she had mounted the colt he had “nearly bucked her to pieces; he had jumped and jounced till she was plum tuckered out” before he had given up.
Gradually reining the horses down and inducing them to walk, we rode side by side through the most magnificent forest of the Sierras, and I determined to probe Susan to see whether there were not, even in the most latent condition, some germs of the appreciation of nature. I looked from base to summit of the magnificent shafts, at the green plumes which traced themselves against the sky, the exquisite fall of purple shadows and golden light upon trunks, at the labyrinth of glowing flowers, at the sparkling whiteness of the mountain brook, and up to the clear, matchless blue that vaulted over us, then turned to Susan’s plain, honest face, and gradually introduced the subject of trees. Ideas of lumber and utilitarian notions of fence-rails were uppermost in her mind; but I briefly penetrated what proved to be only a superficial stratum of the materialistic, and asked her point blank if she did not admire their stately symmetry. A strange, new light gleamed in her eye as I described to her the growth and distribution of forests, and the marvellous change in their character and aspects as they approached the tropics. The palm and the pine, as I worked them up to her, really filled her with delight, and prompted numerous interested and intelligent queries, showing that she thoroughly comprehended my drift. In the pleasant hour of our chat I learned a new lesson of the presence of undeveloped seed in the human mind.
Mr. Newty at last came alongside, and remarked that he must stop about here; “but,” he added, “Susan will go on with you about half a mile, and come back and join me here after I have taken a look at the feed.”
As he rode out into the forest a little way, he called me to him, and I was a little puzzled at what seemed to be the first traces of embarrassment I had seen in his manner.
“You’ll take care of yourself, now, won’t you?” he asked. I tried to convince him that I would.
A slight pause.
“You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?”