The mountain trails seemed as narrow as platinum watch chains. Riding trails here is an art, but not the art of the show ring or the bridle path in Central Park. This is the art of going with the horse, leaning forward in the Spanish saddle, nodding in time to the twist of the path and guiding your horse, almost without pressure, across rocky paths and stream bottoms, until the horse is sure of himself and sure of you.
Rollo said, “I wonder how fast hair grows?”
“Half an inch a month,” I told him.
The hound dog—his name was Señor Hamburger—did three miles to our one. He would advance up the trail, come tewing back, detour into the density of the bush, race around a tree, bounce across an old log. and go off again cross country. He would disappear into the tall grass and white thorn to meet us a mile up the trail, his nose dirty and burrs clinging to his ears.
We ate our sandwiches in the saddle and rode on until four. Then we found a place for a camp.
“When we get back, we could shave the captain as he sleeps,” Rollo suggested.
Pelon put up the discolored canvas tent with its canvas floor and piled heavy live-oak branches, topped with bare poles, around the tent. A ridge of red rock at our hack made fine shelter from the wind. He put down a floor of pine boughs, picking only those with thick pine needles almost like feathers. Pelon built a fireplace with red stones that reflected most of the heat toward the tent opening. The horses had ten acres of grass that the sun heated every day, and there was a stuttering spring creeping from under old logs almost at our elbows, lt was so pleasant there that I didn't give a damn about anything, not even a green Uncle Willie.
To our right was a huge blue platter of sky, and to our left the land fell away so that we could make out a thin line that Pelon said was the coastline. Maybe it was. There was heavy undergrowth up here and blueberries and maybe even a mountain lion now and then. and the deer droppings and tracks showed we would have trouble keeping the dog in camp.
Rollo said. “Maybe fasting would change the hair color?” Uncle Willie likes his food.
After dinner was over and Pelon had scoured the last pot clean with wood ashes, the late sun fell very good through my flannel shirr. We had eaten charquican, a jerked beef stew; carbonada, a kind of pancake; and brook trout fried with bacon strips, the bacon drippings wiped up with corn cakes made by Pelon's secret recipe. By that time the fire was just a bed of embers and we turned in. The hound lay warmly across our feet and sometimes he howled in his sleep, perhaps frightened by the ghosts of baby birds he saw in his dreams.
Outside, the night noises went about their business and something, maybe mountain lions, snuftled around the big tree where we kept all our supplies. We had put them on a platform built on its first big branch from the ground. Something clawed at that tree but never climbed it, which caused Rollo to discard the lion theory and speak knowingly of a wolf.
We came down slowly the next day, back to the town. Uncle Willie was not at the hotel.
He showed up at dinner with flaming red hair and a crimson mustache. He smiled and said, “A local witch doctor. She did it with a secret herb and stale beer. Delightful, isn't it? Well, what's on for tonight? I'm ready to howl —and tango!”
Rollo said, “Very becoming, Captain. I'll lay out the dancing shoes!”
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