I find that I must reconstruct the incident as well as I can from my recollection of the facts as related by Jerry in the course of several conversations, each of which I am forced to admit amplified somewhat the one which had preceded it.
It seems that instead of making for the stream at its nearest point to the eastward, Jerry had cast into the woods above the gorge and worked upstream into the mountains. His luck had been fair, and by the time he neared the point where the Sweetwater disappeared beneath the wall his creel was half full. He clambered over a large rock to a higher level and found himself looking at a stranger, sitting on a fallen tree, fastening a butterfly net. He did not discover that the stranger was a girl until she stood up and he saw that she wore skirts, short skirts, showing neat leather gaiters. She eyed him coolly and neither of them spoke for a long moment, the girl probably because she was waiting for him to speak first, Jerry because (as he described it) of sheer surprise at the trespass and of curiosity as to its accomplishment. Then the girl smiled at Jerry.
"I suppose you know," he said quickly, "that you're trespassing."
She glanced up at him, rather brazenly I fancy, and grinned.
"Oh, really!" Her eyes appraised him and Jerry, I am sure, felt rather taken aback.
"Yes," he went on severely, "you're trespassing. We don't allow any females in here."
Her reply was a laugh which irritated Jerry exceedingly.
"Well, I'm here," she said; "what are you going to do about it?"
"Do about it?" Jerry advanced two or three paces and stood looking down at her. In our first conversation he told me that she seemed absurdly small, quite too insignificant to be so impudent. In our second conversation I elicited the fact that he thought her skin smooth; in our third that her lips were much redder than mine.
When he got near her he paused, for she hadn't moved away as he had expected her to and only looked up at him and laughed.
"You--you know I could--could throw you over the wall with one hand," he stammered.
"I can't see how that can possibly be any business of yours."
"It's an asylum, isn't it?" she asked quite coolly.
"N--no." Jerry missed the irony. "Not at all. I live here. It's my place. You--you're the first woman that ever got in here, and I can't imagine how you did it. I--I don't want to be impolite, but I'm afraid you'll have to go at once."