The chivalrous mountaineer did not wait to be appealed to a second time,
but laying down his gun to which he had clung throughout the night, he
clambered up the steep face of the rock, from projection to projection,
until he reached the tree in which Miss Crabb sat. Meantime she watched
him with admiring eyes and just as he was about to take her in his arms
and descend with her she exclaimed:
"Wait a moment, I might lose the thought, I'll just jot it down."
She took her note-book and pencil again and hurriedly made the following
entry: _Sinewy, virile, lithe, hirsute, fearless, plucky, bronzed,
vigorous, lank, Greek-eyed, Roman-nosed, prompt, large-eared, typical
American. Good hero for dramatic, short, winning dialect story. The
magazines never refuse dialect stories._
"Now, if you please, Mr. Tolliver, I will go with you."
It was an Herculean labor, but Tolliver was a true hero. With one arm
wound around her, after the fashion of the serpent in the group of the
Laocoön, and with her long yellow hair streaming in crinkled jets over
his shoulder, he slowly made his way down to the ground.
Meantime Mose, the dog, with true canine sympathy and helpfulness, had
torn the bonnet into pathetic shreds, and was now lying half asleep
under a tree with a bit of ribbon in his teeth.
"Well, I'll jest ber--beg parding Miss Crabb, but thet ther dog hev et
up yer head-gear," said Tolliver as he viewed with dilating eyes the
scattered fragments.
She comprehended her calamity with one swift glance, but she had caught
a new dialect phrase at the same time.
"Head-gear, you call it, I believe?" she inquired, again producing book
and pencil.
"Beg parding all over, Miss Crabb, I meant bonnet," he hurried to say.
"Oh, it's all right, I assure you," she replied, writing rapidly, "it's
a delightfully fresh and artistic bit of special coloring."
Miss Crabb's clothes were badly torn and she looked as if she had spent
the night wretchedly, but with the exception of a few slight scratches
and bruises she was unhurt.
"Well jes' look a there, will ye!" exclaimed Tolliver as he spied Mose.
There was more of admiration than anger in his voice. "Ef thet ther
'fernal dog haint got yer chin-ribbon in his ole mouth, I'm er rooster!"
"Chin-ribbon," repeated Miss Crabb, making a note, "I'm er rooster," and
she smiled with intense satisfaction. "You don't know, Mr. Tolliver, how
much I am indebted to you."
"Not a tall, Miss Crabb, not a tall. Don't mention of it," he humbly
said, "hit taint wo'th talkin' erbout."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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