"Eight of 'em. I can count 'em," said Henry, "but they're safe from us."
"I wouldn't fire on 'em, not even ef thar wuzn't a warrior within a hundred miles o' us. I don't feel like shootin' at anythin' jest now, Henry."
"It's the valley that makes you feel so peaceful. It has the same effect on me."
"I think I kin see wild flowers down thar bloomin' among the bushes, an' ain't that grass an' them trees fine? an' that is shorely the best creek I've seen. Its water is so pure it looks like silver. I've a notion, Henry, that this wuz the Garden o' Eden."
"That's an odd idea of yours, Sol. How can you prove it's so?"
"An' how can you prove it ain't so? An' so we're back whar we started. Besides, I kin pile up evidence. All along the edge o' the valley are briers an' vines, on which the berries growed. Then too thar are lots o' grapevines on the trees ez you kin see, an' thar are your grapes. An' up toward the end are lots o' hick'ry an' walnut trees an' thar are your nuts, an' ef Adam an' Eve wuz hard-pushed, they could ketch plenty o' fine fish in that creek which I kin see is deep. In the winter they could hev made themselves a cabin easy, up thar whar the trees are thick. An' the whole place in the spring is full o' wild flowers, which Eve must hev stuck her hair full of to please Adam. The more I think o' it, Henry, the shorer I am that this wuz the Garden."
The shiftless one's face was rapt and serious. In the burnished silver of the moonlight the little valley had a beauty, dreamlike in its quality. In that land so truly named the Dark and Bloody Ground it seemed the abode of unbroken peace.
"I reckon," said Shif'less Sol, "that after the fall Adam an' Eve left by that rift between the hills, an' thar the Angel stood with the Flamin' Sword to keep 'em out. O' course they might hev crawled back down the hillside here, an' in other places, but I guess they wuz afeard. It's hard to hev had a fine thing an' then to hev lost it, harder than never to hev had it or to hev knowed what it wuz. I guess, Henry, that Adam an' Eve came often to the hills here an' looked down at their old home, till they wuz skeered away by the flamin' o' the Angel's sword."
"But there's nothing now to keep us out of it. We'll go down there, Sol, because it is a garden after all, a wilderness garden, and nothing but Indians can drive us from it until we want to go."
"All right, Henry. You lead on now, but remember that since Adam an' Eve hev gone away this is my Garden o' Eden. It's shore a purty sight, now that it's beginnin' to whiten with the day."