My name's Ferguson."
"Do you live hereabouts?" Daylight repeated his query.
"Oh, yes.
I've got a little shack back here in the bush a hundred yards, and a pretty spring, and a few fruit trees and berry bushes.
Come in and take a look.
And that spring is a dandy.
You never tasted water like it.
Come in and try it."
Walking and leading his horse, Daylight followed the quick-stepping eager little man through the green tunnel and emerged abruptly upon the clearing, if clearing it might be called, where wild nature and man's earth-scratching were inextricably blended.
It was a tiny nook in the hills, protected by the steep walls of a canon mouth.
Here were several large oaks, evidencing a richer soil. The erosion of ages from the hillside had slowly formed this deposit of fat earth.
Under the oaks, almost buried in them, stood a rough, unpainted cabin, the wide verandah of which, with chairs and hammocks, advertised an out-of doors bedchamber.
Daylight's keen eyes took in every thing.
The clearing was irregular, following the patches of the best soil, and every fruit tree and berry bush, and even each vegetable plant, had the water personally conducted to it.
The tiny irrigation channels were every where, and along some of them the water was running.
Ferguson looked eagerly into his visitor's face for signs of approbation.
"What do you think of it, eh?"
"Hand-reared and manicured, every blessed tree," Daylight laughed, but the joy and satisfaction that shone in his eyes contented the little man.
"Why, d'ye know, I know every one of those trees as if they were sons of mine.
I planted them, nursed them, fed them, and brought them up.
Come on and peep at the spring."
"It's sure a hummer," was Daylight's verdict, after due inspection and sampling, as they turned back for the house.
The interior was a surprise.
The cooking being done in the small, lean-to kitchen, the whole cabin formed a large living room.
A great table in the middle was comfortably littered with books and magazines.
All the available wall space, from floor to ceiling, was occupied by filled bookshelves.
It seemed to Daylight that he had never seen so many books assembled in one place.
Skins of wildcat, 'coon, and deer lay about on the pine-board floor.
"Shot them myself, and tanned them, too," Ferguson proudly asserted.
The crowning feature of the room was a huge fireplace of rough stones and boulders.
"Built it myself," Ferguson proclaimed, "and, by God, she drew!
Never a wisp of smoke anywhere save in the pointed channel, and that during the big southeasters."
Daylight found himself charmed and made curious by the little man. Why was he hiding away here in the chaparral, he and his books?
He was nobody's fool, anybody could see that.
Then why?
The whole affair had a tinge of adventure, and Daylight accepted an invitation to supper, half prepared to find his host a raw-fruit-and-nut-eater or some similar sort of health faddest.
At table, while eating rice and jack-rabbit curry (the latter shot by Ferguson), they talked it over, and Daylight found the little man had no food "views." He ate whatever he liked, and all he wanted, avoiding only such combinations that experience had taught him disagreed with his digestion.
Next, Daylight surmised that he might be touched with religion; but, quest about as he would, in a conversation covering the most divergent topics, he could find no hint of queerness or unusualness.
So it was, when between them they had washed and wiped the dishes and put them away, and had settled down to a comfortable smoke, that Daylight put his question.
"Look here, Ferguson.
Ever since we got together, I've been casting about to find out what's wrong with you, to locate a screw loose somewhere, but I'll be danged if I've succeeded.
What are you doing here, anyway?
What made you come here?
What were you doing for a living before you came here?
Go ahead and elucidate yourself."
Ferguson frankly showed his pleasure at the questions.
"First of all," he began, "the doctors wound up by losing all hope for me.
Gave me a few months at best, and that, after a course in sanatoriums and a trip to Europe and another to Hawaii.
They tried electricity, and forced feeding, and fasting.
I was a graduate of about everything in the curriculum.