CHAPTER VIII
GIPSYING
IT was into the sunshine of a cloudless June morning that Joey and I fared in quest of adventure. Our caravan was well provisioned with necessities, well equipped with cooking utensils, stocked liberally with fishing tackle. And with a lively rattle and bang—we rolled out on to the river road and wheeled away at a goodly pace. I held the reins and Joey alternately piped on his flute and sang a lusty song about a “Quack with a feather on his back.”
Despite the depression that obsessed me my spirits rose as we went on, and by noon when we were well into the heart of the deep lush woods beyond Roselake, I am sure Joey could have had no cause to complain of the gravity of his companion. Surely there is balm for wounded souls in the solitude of the greenwood. We found a spot where bracken waved waist high, where moss was green-gold and flowers were sprouting on rocks, where the very air was dreamful. I felt a sudden electrification. My feet felt young and winged again; I lost all desires, all hopes, all fears; I only realized that I was unweighted. In this meeting with nature I was stripped and unhampered—unexpectedly free from the dragging bondage of the past few days.
We were on the mountain side, and waters poured down into the valley below us, waters that hinted of trout. Heights were to left and right of us, the sky stretched azure-blue between, all about us were sequestered nooks where singing brooks played in and out among the green thickets.
“Shall we camp here, Joey,” I asked, marking the satisfaction on his face.
“Oh, Mr. David, I was ’most afraid to ask! Seems as if we hadn’t gone far enough. I should think gipsies would camp near trout streams, though.”
He was already lifting our cooking kit from the caravan, his small brown face alert, his stout little hands trembling with their eagerness to assist in the unloading. We gave an hour to making camp. I built a fire between two flat stones, and Joey filled a kettle with water and placed it over the blaze, while I put my trout rod together, chose a fly carefully from my meagre home-made assortment and went to the near-by stream.
I whipped the stream carefully for half an hour and succeeded in landing a half dozen trout. They made a meal fit for a king. And afterward Joey and I lay on the grass half dozing and watching a pair of violet-green swallows that had a nest in a hole in a cottonwood tree on the bank of the stream.
“Don’t they like bird houses?” asked the small boy.
“They do,” I replied. “They will welcome almost any tiny opening. They will go through a hole in any gable or cornice. They are industrious and painstaking; they have courage and patience. It is fine to have courage and patience, Joey.” I was almost asleep, but thought it well to point a moral while I had his ear.