"Trying to shake me?"
"No. But why should you trail along with me? I've ridden all over the country alone. I do it every day."
"Hush, Sheila! Let me tell you a secret. I ride with you because I like to."
"Oh, blarney! That's what it is to have a mick ancestry. I suppose I'll have to own up that if I didn't like you to ride with me I wouldn't let you do it."
Casey grinned. Their mutual liking was genuine and so far unsentimental. They were of the same breed—the breed of the pioneer—and their hearts held the same seldom-voiced but deeply rooted love for the same things; the great, sun-washed spaces winnowed by the clean winds, the rosy dawns, violet dusks and nights when the earth scents hung heavy, almost palpable, clinging to the nostrils, the living things of fur and feather bright of eye and wary of habit. But most of all unconsciously they loved and cherished the feeling of room, of space in which to live and breathe and turn freely.
"The present time being inopportune, and Shiner's temper too uncertain for a further avowal of my sentiments," he said, "I suggest that we turn off here and hit a few high spots for Chakchak. Stir up that slothful cayuse of yours. Maybe there's a lope left in him somewhere. See if you can comb it out with a quirt."
"I like your nerve!" she exclaimed. "Beaver Boy can run the heart out of that old buzzard-head of yours and come in dry-haired. Come on, or take my dust!"
The hoofbeats drummed dull thunder from the brown earth, and the dust cloud behind drew out and lengthened with the speed of their going. Side by side they swept through the silent land, breasting small rises, swooping down slopes, breathing their horses whenever they came to heavier ascents.
Sometimes as they rode knee touched knee. It gave Casey Dunne a strange but comfortable feeling of comradeship. He looked at the woman beside him, appreciating her firm, easy seat in the stock saddle, her management of Beaver Boy, now eager to prove his prowess against the buckskin's. He noted the rich colour lying beneath the tan of the smooth cheeks, the rounded brown throat, the poise of the lithe, pliant body and the watchful tension of the strong arms and shoulders as the big bay fought hard for his head and a brief freedom to use his full strength and speed in one mad heartbreaking burst. But most of all he noted and was attracted by the level, direct, fearless stare beneath the slightly drawn brows into the distances.
A brown girl in a brown land! It came to Casey Dunne, who was imaginative within the strict seclusion of his inner self, that she typified their land, the West, in youth, in fearlessness, in potentialities yet lying fallow, unawakened, in fruitfulness to come. What of the vagrant touch of the woman, the gold of the day, the clean, dry air and the glory of motion, the chord of romance within him vibrated and began to sing.