Nevertheless I was still facetious to Wanza when we dismounted beneath the shade of some giant pines at noon. She winced as she unslung the rifle from her shoulder, and I said teasingly:
“I thought you’d feel the weight of that by noon.”
Haidee murmured: “You poor thing! Why did you insist on bringing it?”
I looked across at her sharply. Something in her manner of speaking caused me to say chivalrously: “Wanza is welcome to the rifle—it isn’t that.”
With a quick glance from one to the other Wanza turned to the saddle bags and began with Joey’s help, to unpack mysterious looking bundles. I gathered dry twigs, built a fire between two flat rocks, and went to a distant spring for water. Then, a half hour later, the blue smoke from our fire drifted away among the pines, and the wind bore the mingled odors of coffee and sizzling bacon. We sat in a group around the red tablecloth Wanza spread on the ground. Captain Grif ate but little, but he discoursed at large.
We finished our meal, and lay back on the grass, and saw the sky, blue above the dark tapestry of the forest. From reclining I dropped flat on my back and lay staring up through the chinks in the green roof, while Haidee read Omar aloud, Wanza threw pine cones at the chipmunks, Captain Grif snoozed, and Joey took his bow-gun and went off on a still hunt for Indians.
An hour passed. When Haidee ceased reading Wanza sighed and said:
“Why didn’t we eat our lunch closer to the spring, I’d like to know. I’ll need more water to wash the forks and spoons before we go.”
I rose with a resigned air. “I will go to the spring,” I said, taking the small tin pail that had been used as a coffee boiler. “But understand we are to have another hour of Omar before we go—this is an intermission merely.”
The captain opened one eye, and half closing his big hand made an ineffectual attempt to scoop a fly into his palm.