"This Jones," the man went on, "bin bit by a snake, is afraid she'll be wafted on high, so my eyes is sort of engaged in holding her down while she swells. She kicked me hearty, though, and loading sugar's no symptom of passing away, so on the whole I hope she'll worry along while I cook dinner."
He stood facing me, the bag still in his hand, and my colt asking pointedly for sugar. Very tall, gaunt, deeply tanned, perhaps twenty-five years of age, he seemed to me immeasurably old, so deeply lined was his face. And yet it was the face of one at peace. Purity of life, quaint humor, instant sympathy, may perhaps have given him that wonderful charm of manner which visibly attracted animals, which certainly compelled me as I accepted his invitation to dinner. I had been away since daybreak, and now the sun was entering the west. As to my purpose, that I felt could wait.
So I sat under the pines, pretending to nurse Jones while the shadows lengthened over the tawny grass, and orange needles flecked fields of rock, out to the edge of the headland.
The man unsaddled my horse, unloaded his ponies, fetched water from the spring of natural Apollinaris, but when, coming back, he found me lighting a fire, he begged me to desist, to rest while he made dinner. And I was glad to rest, thinking about the peace beyond the edge of the headland. Yet it was interesting to see how a man keeps house in the wilderness, and how different are his ways from those of a woman. No housewife could have been more daintily clean, or shown a swifter skill, or half the silent ease with which this woodsman made the table-ware for one, enough to serve two people. But a woman would not clean a frying-pan by burning it and throwing on cold water. He sprinkled flour on a ground sheet, and made dough without wetting the canvas. Would I like bread, or slapjacks, or a pie? He made a loaf of bread, in a frying pan set on edge among glowing coals, and, wondering how a pie could possibly happen without the assistance of an oven, I forgot all about that cliff.
He parboiled the bacon, then peppered it while it was frying. When the coffee boiled, he thrust in a red coal to throw the grounds to the bottom. If I thought of English picnics, that was by way of contrast. My host had never known, I had almost forgotten, the shabby barriers, restraints, and traditions of that world where there are picnics. Frontiersmen are, I think, really spirits strayed out of chivalric ages into our century of all vulgarities. They are not abased, but only amused by our world's condescensions. Uneducated? They are better trained for their world than we are for ours. Their facts are at first-hand from life, ours only at second-hand from books. Illiterate? I should like to see one of our professors read the tracks on a frontier trail. What was the good of the education which had led me to the brink of this cliff? My host, who lived always at the edge of death, had eyes which seemed to see my very thoughts. How else could he know that silence was so kind? To the snake-bitten mare he gave outspoken sympathy, to me his silence. Jones and I were his patients, and both of us trusted him.
He had found me out. The thing I had intended was a crime, and conscience-stricken, I dreaded lest he should speak. I could not bear that. Already his camp was cleaned and in order, his pipe filled and alight, at any moment he might break the restful silence. That's why I spoke, and at random, asking if he were not from the United States.
His eyes said plainly, "So that's the game, eh?" His broad smile said, "Well, we'll play." He sat down, cross-legged. "Yes," he answered, "I'm an American citizen, except," he added softly, "on election days, and then," he cocked up one shrewd eye, "I'm sort of British. Canadian? No, I cayn't claim that either, coming from the Labrador, for that's Newf'nland, a day's march nearer home.
"Say, Mrs. Trevor, you don't know my name yet. It's Smith, and with my friends I'm mostly Jesse."
"If you please, may I be one of your friends?"
"If I behave good, you may. No harm in my trying."