With easy grace, she wheeled the big roan, touched him lightly with her spurs, and galloped up the road.
CHAPTER II. JEANNE DUDLEY.
“I’m glad you are here, of course, Rand—awfully glad! But I can’t understand how you ever came to leave God’s country for—this!”
Her voice, soft and reminiscent, came to him through the darkness as they moved slowly across the little garden toward the high bluff overlooking the river. The garden was Jeanne Dudley’s special care and pride; and the delicate odors of the vivid flowers were very sweet and refreshing to him after his long journey. Overhead, stars twinkled with the bigness and brilliance which they show only in the high, free lands of the mountains.
“‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ Jeanne,” Rand Cameron, the curly-haired man, laughed. “Dad left nothing—but bills; and they swallowed the plantation! I had to do something. The gold-fields seemed to offer a chance; and, as I knew you and the major were in this neighborhood, I—well, here I am!”
“Yes, here you are,” his blue-eyed companion answered seriously, “in one of the wildest gold-fields of the country!”
“But—with you,” he replied softly.
She did not answer, and he took her hand. After a moment, she gently withdrew it.
“Don’t Rand, please.”
“You’re—you’re not holding that silly quarrel against me, are you?” he asked dejectedly. “Five years, Jeanne! I—I hoped you would forgive and forget that!”