Part 46 (2/2)

”Oh, I can't, I want to look and listen. Keep still--” The men stopped their work, and the music of the murmurous boughs and the gliding water filled the silence. She turned her head, sniffing the forest's scents, her glance lighting on the blue shoulders of distant hills.

”And look at the river, yellow, yellow with gold! I can't work now, I want to see it all--and feel it too,” and she ran to the water's edge where she sat down on a rock and gazed up and down the canon.

When the camp was ready Courant joined her. The rock was wide enough for two and he sat beside her.

”So you like it, Missy?” he said, sending a side-long glance at her flushed face.

”Like it!” though there was plenty of room she edged nearer to him, ”I'm wondering if it really is so beautiful or if I just think it so after the trail.”

”You'll be content to stay here with me till we've made our pile?”

She looked at him and nodded, then slipped her fingers between his and whispered, though there was no one by to hear, ”I'd be content to stay anywhere with you.”

He was growing accustomed to this sort of reply. Deprived of it he would have noticed the omission, but it had of late become so common a feature in the conversation he felt no necessity to answer in kind. He glanced at the pine trunks about them and said:

”If the claim's good, we'll cut some of those and build a cabin.

You'll see how comfortable I can make you, the way they do on the frontier.”

She pressed his fingers for answer and he went on:

”When the winter comes we can move farther down. Up here we may get snow. But there'll be time between now and then to put up something warm and waterproof.”

”Why should we move down? With a good cabin we can be comfortable here. The snow won't be heavy this far up. They told Daddy John all about it at the Fort. And you and he can ride in there sometimes when we want things.”

These simple words gratified him more than she guessed. It was as if she had seen into the secret springs of his thought and said what he was fearful she would not say. That was why--in a spirit of testing a granted boon to prove its genuineness--he asked with tentative questioning:

”You won't be lonely? There are no people here.”

She made the bride's answer and his contentment increased, for again it was what he would have wished her to say. When he answered he spoke almost sheepishly, with something of uneasy confession in his look:

”I'd like to live in places like this always. I feel choked and stifled where there are walls shutting out the air and streets full of people. Even in the Fort I felt like a trapped animal. I want to be where there's room to move about and n.o.body bothering with different kinds of ideas. It's only in the open, in places without men, that I'm myself.”

For the first time he had dared to give expression to the mood of the wakeful night. Though it was dim in the busy brightness of the present--a black spot on the l.u.s.ter of cheerful days--he dreaded that it might come again with its scaring suggestions. With a nerve that had never known a tremor at any menace from man, he was frightened of a thought, a temporary mental state. In speaking thus to her, he recognized her as a help-meet to whom he could make a shamed admission of weakness and fear no condemnation or diminution of love. This time, however, she made the wrong reply:

”But we'll go down to the coast after a while, if our claim's good and we get enough dust out of it. I think of it often. It will be so nice to live in a house again, and have some one to do the cooking, and wear pretty clothes. It will be such fun living where there are people and going about among them, going to parties and maybe having parties of our own.”

He withdrew his hand from hers and pushed the hair back from his forehead. Though he said nothing she was conscious of a drop in his mood. She bent forward to peer into his face and queried with bright, observing eyes:

”You don't seem to like the thought of it.”

”Oh, it's not me,” he answered. ”I was just wondering at the queer way women talk. A few minutes ago you said you'd be content anywhere with me. Now you say you think it would be such fun living in a city and going to parties.”

”With you, too,” she laughed, pressing against his shoulder. ”I don't want to go to the parties alone.”

”Well, I guess if you ever go it'll have to be alone,” he said roughly.

She understood now that she had said something that annoyed him, and not knowing how she had come to do it, felt aggrieved and sought to justify herself:

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