Miss Lucy’s eyes lighted up with pleasure as, anticipating his drift, she nodded her head.
“Well then,” said Hardy, with finality, “if you’ll get up early in the morning, I’ll catch you a little pony that I gentled myself, and we can ride up the river together. How does that strike you?”
“Fine!” exclaimed Lucy, with sudden enthusiasm.
“Oh, Rufus,” she cried impulsively, “if you only knew how weak and helpless a thing it is to be a woman––and how glad we are to be noticed! Why, I was just thinking before you came in that about the only really helpful thing a woman could do in this world was just to stay around home and cook the meals.”
“Well, you just let me cook those meals for a while,” said Rufus, with brotherly authority, “and come out and be a man for a change. Can you ride pretty well?”
Lucy glanced at him questioningly, and thought she read what was in his mind.
“Yes,” she said, “I can ride, but––but I just couldn’t bring myself to dress like Kitty!” she burst out. “I know it’s foolish, but I can’t bear to have people notice me so. But I’ll be a man in everything else, if you’ll only give me a chance.” She stood 263 before him, radiant, eager, her eyes sparkling like a child’s, and suddenly Hardy realized how much she lost by being always with Kitty. Seen by herself she was as lithe and graceful as a fairy, with a steady gaze very rare in women, and eyes which changed like the shadows in a pool, answering every mood in wind and sky, yet always with their own true light. Her cheeks glowed with the fresh color which her father’s still retained, and she had inherited his generous nature, too; but in mind and stature she took after her dainty mother, whose exquisite grace and beauty had made her one of the elect. Perhaps it was this quality of the petite in her which appealed to him––for a little man cannot endure to be laughed at for his size, even in secret––or perhaps it was only the intuitive response to a something which in his prepossession he only vaguely sensed, but Rufus Hardy felt his heart go out to her in a moment and his voice sank once more to the caressing fulness which she most loved to hear.
“Ah, Lucy,” he said, “you need never try to be a man in order to ride with me. It would be hard luck if a woman like you had to ask twice for anything. Will you go out with me every day? No? Then I shall ask you every day, and you shall go whenever you please! But you know how it is. The sheepmen are hiding along the river waiting for a chance to 264 sneak across, and if I should stay in camp for a single day they might make a break––and then we would have a war. Your father doesn’t understand that, but I do; and I know that Jeff will never submit to being sheeped out without a fight. Can’t you see how it is? I should like to stay here and entertain you, and yet I must protect your father’s cattle, and I must protect Jeff. But if you will ride out with me when it is not too hot, I––it––well, you’ll go to-morrow, won’t you?”
He rose and took her hand impulsively, and then as quickly dropped it and turned away. The muffled chuck, chuck, of a horse’s feet stepping past the door smote upon his ear, and a moment later a clear voice hailed them.
“What are you children chattering about in there?” cried Kitty Bonnair, and Hardy, after a guilty silence, replied: