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Updated: May 5, 2025
Every little while along the rooty, hummocky banks of the creek I would pass a muskrat's slide. Here was one at the butt of a tulip-poplar, its platform wet and freshly trodden, its "dive" shooting sheer over a root into the stream. Farther on stood a large tussock whose top was trampled flat and covered with sedge-roots.
It was a gorgeous spring evening, with every hill showing as clear as a cut amethyst. The air had the queer, rooty smell of bogs, but it was as fresh as mid-ocean, and it had the strangest effect on my spirits. I actually felt light-hearted. I might have been a boy out for a spring holiday tramp, instead of a man of thirty-seven very much wanted by the police.
I only sneezed a great deal, and papa said somefing about rooty ceilings." In vain the stranger pondered over the last remark. He was unable to discover its application, and accordingly he passed to a more obvious question. "What is your name?" he asked. "What's yours?" "Gifford Barrett." "Mine is McAlister Holden." "Um-m. I think I haven't met you before."
The warm shadows of a California summer night were settling down over the wooded hills and rocky gulches about Fong Wu's, and there was little but his music to break the silence. Long since, the chickens had sleepily sought perches in the hen yard, with its high wall of rooty stumps and shakes, and on the branches of the Digger pine that towered beside it.
A howitzer was immediately laid for the removal of this obstacle, and the shell fired from it lodged in the very centre of the rooty part of the tree, and when it burst blew it to pieces. This drew upon the artillery-officer who laid it the eulogiums of the spectators. Amongst the number was the Irish sergeant, who cried out, "By the powers, captain, but that's what I call a moving shot."
Over-hanging banks of rooty turf, had these creeks, under which the larger and soberer fishes lurked in dignified caution like bank presidents, too wise for any common bait, but eager for the big good things. The narrower reaches were all overshadowed by the long grass until you had to part the greenery to see the water.
The forest thinned, and we traversed a marshy piece, of country with many single great trees. Often Shalah would halt for a second, strain his ears, and sniff the light wind like a dog. He seemed to find guidance, but I got none, only the hoot of an owl or the rooty smell of the woodland. At last we struck a little stream, and followed its course between high banks of pine.
I won't let them see me, though; but I must find out what they are up to. Wait and keep quiet. I'll soon be back." I knew that I should find their horses' hoof-marks at whatever place they had left the stream; and I followed the brook silently, craftily and slowly, like a hunter trailing a wild beast, examining the bank of soft black rooty earth for their tracks.
Then the one nearest to him gave him answer; and he told how that they were formerly flowers, but none of those who thrust their rooty hands greedily into the ground and draw nourishment from the dingy earth, only to make themselves fat and large withal; but that the light was dearer to them than anything, even at night; and while the other flowers slept, they gazed unwearied on the light, and drank it in with eager adoration sun, and moon, and star light.
"Here, chuck us the rooty!" was the request when one needed bread; while though substantial mustard and pepper pots adorned the board, the salt was in the primitive form of a lump, which was pushed about from man to man, and scraped down with the dinner knives.
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