“You thought him to admire the love curl, while he was remarking the soil upon your face, Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye,” I laughed to myself as I plunged my face into the icy pool.

After a finish to the breakfast, my Gouverneur Faulkner gave to me the information that we must tether the good horses and make the remainder of the journey by walking, which we did for hardly a short hour.

“The wildcat still is straight up Turkey Gulch and we’ll have to scramble for it.  It’s hid like the nest of an old turkey hen,” he said to me as we set out upon the mounting of a very steep precipice.

“What is that word, ’wildcat still’?” I asked as I slid over a great rock with emerald moss encrusted, and struggled beside my Gouverneur Faulkner through a heavy underbrush of leafy greenness.

“A place where men make whiskey in defiance of the law of their State,” he answered me as he held aside a long branch of green that was pink tipped, so that I might slip thereunder without a scratching.

“Are you not the law of the State, my Gouverneur Faulkner?” I asked of him as I pulled myself by his arm through the thickness.

“I’m all that, but I’m the son of Old Harpeth and Jim Todd’s blood brother first.  Some day I’ll smoke Jim out of his hole and get him a good job.  Now, wait a minute and see what happens,” and as he spoke my Gouverneur Faulkner stood very still for a long minute.  As I sat at his side upon the fallen trunk of a large tree I regarded him with admiration, because he had the aspect of some beautiful, lithe animal of the woods as he listened with a deep attention.  Then very quickly he put his two long fingers to his mouth, and behold the call of a wild bird came from between his lips.  Twice it was repeated and then he stood again in deep attention.  I made not even a little breathing as I too listened.

Then came three clear notes of that same wild bird in reply from not very far up the mountain from us.

“That’s Jim, the old turkey; come on!” said my Gouverneur Faulkner as he again began to break through the leafy barriers of the low trees.

And in a very short space of time a man emerged from a little path that led behind a tall cliff of the gray rocks.  He was a very large and a very fierce man and I might have had a fright of him if his blue eyes had not held such a kindness and joy in them at the sight of my Gouverneur Faulkner.

“Howdy, Bill,” he said with no handshake or other form of a comrade’s greeting.

“Howdy, Jim,” returned my Gouverneur Faulkner in a manner of the same indifference but with also an expression in his face of delight at the sight of his blood brother, that Mr. Jim Todd.

“That thar boy a shet-mouth?”

“He’s Bob, and as hard as a nut,” was the introduction I had from my Gouverneur Faulkner.

“Then come on,” with which command that wild man led us around the tall cliff of gray rock, over which climbed a sweet vine of rosy blossoming, which I now know to call a laurel, and we arrived in front of a small and low hut that was built against the rocks.  A clear, small stream made a very noisy way past the door of the hut, but save for its clamor all was silent.