He loved to loaf long afternoons in the shade with
his books or to be up with the dawn and away over the hills.
On occasion he accompanied Dede and Daylight on deer hunts
through the wild canons and over the rugged steeps of Hood
Mountain, though more often Dede and Daylight were out alone.
This riding was one of their chief joys. Every wrinkle and
crease in the hills they explored, and they came to know every
secret spring and hidden dell in the whole surrounding wall of
the valley. They learned all the trails and cow-paths; but
nothing delighted them more than to essay the roughest and most
impossible rides, where they were glad to crouch and crawl along
the narrowest deer-runs, Bob and Mab struggling and forcing their
way along behind. Back from their rides they brought the seeds
and bulbs of wild flowers to plant in favoring nooks on the
ranch. Along the foot trail which led down the side of the big
canon to the intake of the water-pipe, they established their
fernery. It was not a formal affair, and the ferns were left to
themselves. Dede and Daylight merely introduced new ones from
time to time, changing them from one wild habitat to another.
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