Part 11 (1/2)
The yellow blossoms made a garland about her hat.
”Do you like them thus?” she asked, delighted.
”Immensely.”
”Then they shall stay there. And Imo will die of envy when I tell her they're yours.”
”n.o.body ever died of that.”
”Perhaps not. But she will suffer extremely. You didn't even put bean plants in her hat.”
Lee was highly amused at this raillery. He began to walk forward by her side as she moved away from the spot, now addressing her, now listening to her words, in a desire to stretch the last minute to the uttermost. Her head came just even with his shoulder, so that she had to raise her face to gaze at him when he spoke, and in the act there was something simple, winning, blithe, as likewise in the swing of her lissom figure beside his own there was an inimitable jauntiness and cheer. He divined her eager, ardent spirit; and the closeness of her, this comrades.h.i.+p, set his blood humming.
Abruptly he halted, laying a finger on her arm.
”I mustn't go the whole way, you know,” he said, ”though I should like to. For, by heavens, you've opened my eyes! Didn't realize how satiated with myself I'd become. But I'll make up for that now, Miss Ruth, and it won't be very long before you and your friend will be planning how to rid yourselves of me.”
”Just try us and see,” she exclaimed.
”Well, I shall. Till to-morrow, then.”
”Till to-morrow, yes.” She moved forward some paces and wheeled about, pointing her forefinger at his head and working her thumb.
”Beware--and don't forget!” Then after another advance and face about she concluded by blowing him a kiss off the palm of her hand, with which performance she did actually start for home, weaving her way through the sagebrush and going farther and farther off.
”What a pretty little witch she is!” thought Lee; and he, too, made his way from the spot.
Dave's hot, hara.s.sed face greeted him at the door.
”Where is she? Didn't she come?” he cried, peering about everywhere.
”Well, thank goodness for that! But if that isn't the way with a girl--and after I'd swept up and made the beds and sc.r.a.ped all the skillets, too!”
CHAPTER IX
That Sunday afternoon at Sarita Creek! The dinner, so savoury, so delectable; the two girls, arrayed in cool white lawn, rosy-cheeked, beaming; the gay talk and banter and laughter; the blissful hours together on the gra.s.s beneath the trees, with the wide mesa diffusing an immense languor, with the mountains bestowing a vast peace, with the brook at their feet murmuring an accompaniment to their words--hours to treasure, hours of pure gold: Little wonder that Dave, lying full length and gazing upward through the boughs at the blue vault, allowed his eyelids to sink and at last to close. Little wonder the girls' faces grew dreamy and their voices gentle. And none, none at all, that Lee succ.u.mbed to the spell.
He was still under the enchantment when toward sunset Ruth suggested they go up the canon. But Imogene, arousing herself, declared that she had letters to write; and Dave, still fast asleep, was already on roamings of his own. Ruth and Lee therefore went alone up the path through the trees and underbrush, until they emerged in the cool, dusky gorge formed by the contracting of the rocky walls. The brook rippled by over stones and moss. A few insects hovered over the stream with their tiny bodies s.h.i.+ning like bronze. From somewhere came a sweet, honeyed smell of flowers.
”Imo writes letters regularly,” Ruth explained concerning her friend, ”to an instructor in a university in the East. I don't think they're exactly affianced, but expect to be. Waiting, apparently. Waiting until he's a professor--and until her health is better, too, I imagine. An agreement to let things rest as they are for the present, one might say. Imogene talks very little about it, and of course I ask no questions.”
She sat down on a fallen tree, patting its trunk to signify a place for him at her side. Pointing at crevises in the canon wall, she began to tell him the names she and Imogene had given them--Bandit's Stair, Devil's Crack, Bear's Hole, and to enumerate those a.s.signed the jutting points and k.n.o.bs along the rim that by a stretch of the imagination bore a resemblance to animals or human heads.
As she talked, with her gray eyes at times turning to his to learn if he was interested, he felt anew the charm of her youthfulness, of her vivid personality. It dwelt in her small, firm hands pointing now here, now there, in her slender, rounded form faced toward him, in her red lips, her soft smooth cheek, her brow, in her glances and her animated words. He noted again, as a quality altogether delicious, the air of unconscious friendliness that he had perceived at their very first encounter. It quite offset the slight touch of obstinacy in her chin--but, in truth, did the latter require an offset? He had earlier thought that with such a trait one could not foretell where its possessor might go, or what do, or what exact, under stress of feeling. He smiled at that now. How ridiculous the notion! Why shouldn't a girl have a bit of determination in her make-up? Well, she should. It gave force to her character. It made her more individual, more attractive. It coloured a nature so essentially feminine as Ruth Gardner's with elusive and delightful possibilities.
”See, up yonder at the top!” she exclaimed. ”That piece of rock like a man's head and shoulders I named Lee Bryant, after you.”
”Do I look as block-headed as that?”
”No. It was not because of any resemblance, but because you kept your back so long toward us. Now, however, since you've repented and ceased to neglect us, I shall call it after someone else. Perhaps after the stage-driver who takes our letters down to Kennard; he sits hunched up like that. I'll seek a much nicer rock to represent you.”