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It runs back like an embayment into the close-growing scrub, and as the trail can be distinguished debouching at its upper end, the naturalist has no doubt that these joyous gentry are approaching in that direction. And so are they a singular cavalcade, consisting of some thirty individuals on horseback; for all are mounted.
Morning found them climbing through a matted jungle of close-growing spruce and down-timber. Breed chose a ridge that lifted above the trees and there curled up for the day in a clump of stunted sage. Coyotes hunt in the full glare of the noonday sun as readily as at night and Cripp and Peg slept a bare two hours before starting once more on the hunt.
It was Jim's Mannlicher which spoke, but the bullet missed its aim. The dacoits at work about the big jingal had artfully placed the weapon so that its mouth pointed from between two close-growing teak saplings, and the trees formed a safe cover for the gunners. "I thought I could pick one of 'em off that time," remarked Jim, "but I believe I only hit a tree after all."
"I should think you were!" and she laughed good-humouredly. "You must have been pretty near us all the while!" He made no answer, and together they paced slowly across the grass, sweet with the mixed perfume of thousands of tiny close-growing herbs and flowers which clung in unseen clumps to the soil.
The lad who had so abruptly materialized from the close-growing vegetation peculiar to the region about the little town of Hampton, on the south shore of Long Island, wore a well-fitting uniform of brown khaki, canvas leggings of the same hue and a soft hat of the campaign variety, turned up at one side.
Certain it is that in the course of a walk down Brick Lane, or the adjacent thoroughfares, one will encounter men of his type; men of middle height, of slight build, with thick, close-growing hair strongly curling, boldly curving lips, large nostrils, prominent cheek-bones, dark eyes almost fiercely shining; men who are startlingly un-English. Doctor Meyer Isaacson was like these men.
They knew the place there was rugged, broken country a mile from the road, deep cross gullies with treacherous banks, and patches of wattle scrub close-growing and dark, where a man might ride to his death at every stride of his horse. And down the road they raced, till they saw by the loom of the open bush where the boundary fences ceased.
After going a few hundred feet he reached a laurel thicket, some thirty yards broad, and two or three times as long which he did not leave. I ran up to the edge and there halted, not liking to venture into the mass of twisted, close-growing stems and glossy foliage. Moreover, as I halted, I head him utter a peculiar, savage kind of whine from the heart of the brush.
Thick, close-growing vines and bushes surrounded the bench, bound in on both sides the shaded path. Through a network of thorns and tangled branches, somehow the owner of that scarf had managed to break her way. The very moment that Mr. Sewall stood blankly surveying the empty bench, she, hidden by a row of young firs, was eagerly skirting the west wall of her hostess's estate.
See especially Jackson Himes in The Blazed Trail; and The Rawhide. After Farewell Gap, as has been hinted, the country changes utterly. Possibly that is why it is named Farewell Gap. The land is wild, weird, full of twisted trees, strangely colored rocks, fantastic formations, bleak mountains of slabs, volcanic cones, lava, dry powdery soil or loose shale, close-growing grasses, and strong winds.
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