The chivalrous mountaineer did not wait to be appealed to a second time, but laying down his gun to which he had clung throughout the night, he clambered up the steep face of the rock, from projection to projection, until he reached the tree in which Miss Crabb sat. Meantime she watched him with admiring eyes and just as he was about to take her in his arms and descend with her she exclaimed:
“Wait a moment, I might lose the thought, I’ll just jot it down.”
She took her note-book and pencil again and hurriedly made the following entry: Sinewy, virile, lithe, hirsute, fearless, plucky, bronzed, vigorous, lank, Greek-eyed, Roman-nosed, prompt, large-eared, typical American. Good hero for dramatic, short, winning dialect story. The magazines never refuse dialect stories.
“Now, if you please, Mr. Tolliver, I will go with you.”
It was an Herculean labor, but Tolliver was a true hero. With one arm wound around her, after the fashion of the serpent in the group of the Laocoön, and with her long yellow hair streaming in crinkled jets over his shoulder, he slowly made his way down to the ground.
Meantime Mose, the dog, with true canine sympathy and helpfulness, had torn the bonnet into pathetic shreds, and was now lying half asleep under a tree with a bit of ribbon in his teeth.
“Well, I’ll jest ber—beg parding Miss Crabb, but thet ther dog hev et up yer head-gear,” said Tolliver as he viewed with dilating eyes the scattered fragments.
She comprehended her calamity with one swift glance, but she had caught a new dialect phrase at the same time.
“Head-gear, you call it, I believe?” she inquired, again producing book and pencil.