“Only one,” answered Hale with equal cheer. The old woman pushed back her bonnet as he waded through the water towards them and he saw that she was puffing a clay pipe. She looked at the fisherman and his tackle with the naive wonder of a child, and then she said in a commanding undertone.
“Go on, Billy.”
“Now, ole Hon, I wish ye'd jes' wait a minute.” Hale smiled. He loved old people, and two kinder faces he had never seen—two gentler voices he had never heard.
“I reckon you got the only green pyerch up hyeh,” said the old man, chuckling, “but thar's a sight of 'em down thar below my old mill.” Quietly the old woman hit the horse with a stripped branch of elm and the old gray, with a switch of his tail, started.
“Wait a minute, Hon,” he said again, appealingly, “won't ye?” but calmly she hit the horse again and the old man called back over his shoulder:
“You come on down to the mill an' I'll show ye whar you can ketch a mess.”
“All right,” shouted Hale, holding back his laughter, and on they went, the old man remonstrating in the kindliest way—the old woman silently puffing her pipe and making no answer except to flay gently the rump of the lazy old gray.
Hesitating hardly a moment, Hale unjointed his pole, left his minnow bucket where it was, mounted his horse and rode up the path. About him, the beech leaves gave back the gold of the autumn sunlight, and a little ravine, high under the crest of the mottled mountain, was on fire with the scarlet of maple. Not even yet had the morning chill left the densely shaded path. When he got to the bare crest of a little rise, he could see up the creek a spiral of blue rising swiftly from a stone chimney. Geese and ducks were hunting crawfish in the little creek that ran from a milk-house of logs, half hidden by willows at the edge of the forest, and a turn in the path brought into view a log-cabin well chinked with stones and plaster, and with a well-built porch. A fence ran around the yard and there was a meat house near a little orchard of apple-trees, under which were many hives of bee-gums. This man had things “hung up” and was well-to-do. Down the rise and through a thicket he went, and as he approached the creek that came down past the cabin there was a shrill cry ahead of him.
“Whoa thar, Buck! Gee-haw, I tell ye!” An ox-wagon evidently was coming on, and the road was so narrow that he turned his horse into the bushes to let it pass.
“Whoa—Haw!—Gee—Gee—Buck, Gee, I tell ye! I'll knock yo' fool head off the fust thing you know!”