"Mornin', sis'. You look tired," he said. "You ought to have a stick,
like me. Hold on--I'll cut you one."
Before the girl could respond beyond an answering smile and "good
morning," the new friend had put his own alpenstock into her hands and
gone to the roadside, where, with unerring judgment, he selected a long,
straight, tapering shoot of ash, and hewed it deftly with a monster
jack-knife drawn from his trousers pocket.
"There--try that," he said as he returned, trimming off the last of the
leaves and branches.
Johnnie took the staff with her sweet smile of thanks.
For a few moments the two walked on silently side by side, she
desperately absorbed in her anxieties, her companion apparently
returning to some world apart in his own mind. Suddenly:
"Can I get to the railroad down this side?" the man asked her in that
odd, incidental voice of his which suggested that what he said was
merely a small portion of what he thought.
"Why--yes, I reckon so," hesitated Johnnie. "It's a pretty far way, and
there don't many folks travel on it. It's an old Indian trail; a heap of
our roads here are that; but it'll take you right to the railroad--the
W. and A."
Her companion chuckled, seemingly with some inner satisfaction.
"Yes, that's just what I supposed. I soldiered all over this country,
and I thought it was about as pretty scenery as God ever made.
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