Mrs. Vernon laughed. “That is always the first thought of an amateur rider—how high up the saddle seems!”
Mr. Gilroy assisted the Captain to mount, then he helped the girls up. Mark had an extra horse, and now he said: “I brung my own hoss ez I figgered I’d best lead the way as fur as Crest Trail. After that it’s easy going and you can’t miss Dunstan’s Cabin.”
“All right, Mark—lead on,” said Mr. Gilroy.
“As the hosses is all safe fer ridin’, the scouts needen’ fear ’em. They ain’t colts ner air they skittish,” said Mark.
Mr. Gilroy smiled, for he surmised as much. The mounts, in fact, seemed aged enough to be pensioned for the rest of their lives.
As Mark led the way up the trail, he described Granny Dunstan and her abode. “She’s most a hunerd years old, an’ she’s allus lived in that cabin. This boy is her great-gran’son, but his folks lives in a town some forty mile away. He come to stop wid’ Granny when she got so old, an’ he likes the woods life.”
“But he enlisted, you say, to fight the Germans,” said Mrs. Vernon, eagerly.
“Yeh! He keeps up to th’ times, an’ hes books and papers up thar. When the Lusertani was sunk he got reel mad, an’ come down to Freedom an’ wanted to git a crowd of young uns up to go and shoot the Huns. But they diden’ want to go so fur from hum. Then he got his dander up an’ says: ‘I’ll jine myself, then. You’ll hear of me some day!’ And off he goes. Some folks said he oughter have stayed wid his Granny, so a few of us druv up to ask her about it. Golly! she mos’ made us deef with her shoutin’ at our bein’ slackers, cuz she said her boy was the onny true Yank in Freedom!
“She made us feel mighty small when she shouts out: ‘Yuh call yer town Freedom! Bah—it ain’t nothin’ but a handful of cowards. It oughter be called “Slack town.”’ We got away pritty soon affer that, an’ folks ain’t so anxious to visit Granny as onct they was.”
This explanation gave the scout party a good idea of the old woman they were about to visit, and Mrs. Vernon said: