“Oh, his leg’s all right.”
The tone of this caused me to look at them. “Well, I hope he’s all all-right!”
Not immediately came the answer: “By latest reports he was enjoying good health.”
Truly they were a hopeless people to get anything direct from. Indirectness is by some falsely supposed to be a property of only the highly civilized; but these latter merely put a brighter and harder polish on it.
That afternoon I drove with my camp things out of town in a “buggy,”—very different from the Eastern vehicle which bears this name,—and the next afternoon between Dinwiddie and Red Creek, on a waste stretch high above the river, who should join me but McDonough. He was riding down the mountain apparently from nowhere, and my pleasure at seeing him was keen. His words were few and halting, as they had been the year before, and in his pleasant, round face the blue eyes twinkled, screwed up and as perplexed as ever. I abstained from more than glancing at the fine sorrel that he rode, lest I should seem to be hinting.
“Water pretty low for this season,” he said.
“Was there not much snow?”
“Next to none, and went early.”
I turned from my direct course and camped at his cabin on North Fork.
“What’s your hurry?” he said next morning, when I was preparing to go.