ties had nothing to compare with the Arch--a sandstone
tunnel full twenty feet high, miraculously boring through the railroad
embankment, and faced with great stones which you could descend by
lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek,
with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the
creek to a wilderness of hazelnut-bushes. He taught her to tear the
drying husks from the nuts and crack the nuts with stones. At his
request Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small
frilly dress. He found a piece of string, and they fished for perch in
the creek. As they had no bait whatever, their success was not large.

A flock of ducks flew low above them, seeking a pond for the night.

"Jiminy!" Carl cried, "it's getting late. We got to hurry. It's awful
far to San Francisco and--I don't know--gee! where'll we sleep
to-night?"

"We hadn't ought to go on, had we?"

"Yes! Come on!"

CHAPTER II

From the creek they tramped nearly two miles, through the dark
gravel-banks of the railroad cut, across the high trestle over
Joralemon River where Gertie had to be coaxed from stringer to
stringer. They stopped only when a gopher in a clearing demanded
attention. Gertie finally forgot the superiority of age when she saw
Carl whistle the quivering gopher-cry, while the gopher sat as though
hypnotized on his pile of fresh black earth. Carl stalked him. As
always happened, the gopher popped into his hole just before Carl
reached him; but it certainly did seem that he had nearly been caught;
and Gertie was jumping with excitement when Carl returned, strutting,
cocking his saber-stick over his shoulder.

Gertie was tired. She, the Minneapolis girl, had not been much awed by
the railroad ties nor the Arch, but now she tramped proudly beside the
man who could catch gophers, till Carl inquired:

"Are you gettin' awful hungry? It's a'most supper-time."

"Yes, I _am_ hungry," trustingly.

"I'm going to go and swipe some 'taters. I guess maybe there's a
farm-house over there. I see a chimbly beyond the slough. You stay
here."

"I dassn't stay alone. Oh, I better go home. I'm scared."

"Come on. I won't let nothing hurt you."

They circled a swamp surrounded by woods, Carl's left arm about her,
his right clutching the saber. Though the sunset was magnificent and a
gay company of blackbirds swayed on the reeds of the slough, dusk was
sneaking out from the underbrush that