Then he lay down, at full length by the fire, with the wooden saddle under his head.
CHAPTER XV—THE VULNERABLE SPOT
The sun was in the sky when the Duke awoke. He had slept eight hours under the narcotics of the forest. He arose and stretched his limbs. The packing cases were set in order; the fire was kindled; the mule stood close beside him, eating her breakfast. The food seemed to be bits of the yellow scone which the mountaineer had offered yesterday to the Duke. The circuit rider sat smoking by the fire; he got up uneasily, stood a moment, kneading his fingers, and moving the broken fern leaves into a heap with the edge of his boot sole. Then he spoke, hesitating and with apology:
"I guess there hain't no breakfast. There war some yaller biscuits, but I give'em to Jezebel."
The Duke instantly remembered that sign laid down in the Hebrew Scriptures, by which one, observing the righteous man, traveling with his beast, should know him. He laughed and nodded to the mule.
"The lady, by all means," he said. Then he threw back his shoulders, filled his lungs with the good pungent air, and looked up at the tree tops. He was not intending to go hungry if the forest could provide a breakfast. But the wood pigeon had departed while the Duke lay below, sleeping on his back. Only the dapper woodpecker remained, hopping about on a dead fir tree, mottled with the sun, his head cocked, looking for a place to drill.
The Duke turned from the forest to the river. The sun lay upon it; the amber water slipped by, gurgling among the reeds, in long wrinkles, over the wide shallow, to a pool studded with huge stones, where it lay for a moment sunning, in a gentle eddy. The Duke followed along the bank to the pool. Out in the dark water beyond him, under the shelter of the great bowlders, fish were moving or lay in vague outline like shadows thrown into the water. Safe here, idling in their house, acquainted with no peril save that of the otter swimming in the night, or the fishhawk descending in the sun. The Duke stood for some moments looking out into the pool, then he returned to the mountaineer who sat smoking by the fire.
"Have you a stout knife?" he said.