“We’ll go down to the river, get the ferry, and go over into the woods. I hope we find some place to eat over there. I am hungry already,” she said.
I had been too occupied to think of breakfast and was hungry, too, and suggested that we go across the street and get a bite. When we came back the horses were ready. The fat man boosted Julia up into her saddle, and we dashed off like Indians. Our way to the river led past Miss Kate’s. When we were in front of it Julia pulled up her horse, and we stopped.
“They are all dead to the world in there except Jo, the colored girl. They won’t get up till four this afternoon. God, what a place! How I hate to go back there!”
The treacherous April showers came on us when we got into the country and drove us into a deserted cabin on an abandoned weed-grown farm. I built a fire in the old fireplace. We found a couple of homemade three-legged stools in a corner and in a box nailed to the wall there was the greasiest pack of cards I ever saw. We got a board that we put on the stools, making a table, and played casino. The roof leaked in a hundred places, the cabin was full of smoke, the rain beat in from all sides, and Julia won every game. She chattered away through it all, and hoped there would be “a regular cyclone.” Discouraged, I threw the cards in the fire. We were half wet and watery-eyed from the smoke, the horses pawed restlessly in the leaky shed behind the cabin. Julia laughed at me and accused me of being a bad loser. I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said: “Oh, I’m half starved, and there’s nothing to eat within miles of here.”
She was just a healthy young animal, always hungry like myself, and the thought of food, especially when it was so far away, started her to raving. Nothing would do but we must head for home. The afternoon was half gone, the rain let up, and the sun shone again. I stamped and beat out the fire.
Julia climbed upon a tree stump in front of the cabin, where she got into her riding habit. I brought her horse around and she leaped to the saddle like an acrobat. The horses, homeward bound, needed no urging. We let them go as fast as they liked, and in the evening pulled up safely in front of the livery stable, where Julia insisted on paying the bill. The fat man reached for the money I proffered, but she snatched it out of my hand and made him take hers.
“This is on me,” she said, returning my money, “and so is the dinner. Come on, let’s find a good place to eat.”
The fat man looked at me slyly, started to say something, but changed his mind. He was afraid of Julia.
Any place is a good place to eat when one is young and hungry, and not burdened with money. We wasted no time looking, but went into the first restaurant we came to. Neither did we haggle over the menu card. Julia found chicken, and there we stopped. She never seemed to get enough of it. The dinner was a long time coming; she popped her head out of the box every minute looking for the busy waiter.
“I wonder what’s happened to him. He has either dropped dead or the police came and arrested him,” she was saying when he appeared. We fell on the dinner and devoured it like a couple of hired men. She had the waiter bring a cigar. I managed it fairly well.