That first morning ride with the Penningtons and their friends was an event in the life of Shannon Burke that assumed the proportions of adventure. The novelty, the thrill, the excitement, filled her every moment. The dancing horse beneath her seemed to impart to her a full measure of its buoyant life. The gay laughter of her companions, the easy fellowship of young and old, the generous sympathy that made her one of them, gave her but another glimpse of the possibilities for happiness that requires no artificial stimulus.
She loved the hills. She loved the little trail winding through the leafy tunnel of a cool barranco. She loved the thrill of the shelving hillside where the trail clung precariously in its ascent toward some low summit. She tingled with the new life and a new joy as they broke into a gallop along a grassy ridge.
Custer, in the lead, reined in, raising his hand in signal for them all to stop.
“Look, Miss Burke,” he said, pointing toward a near hillside. “There’s a coyote. Thought maybe you’d never seen one on his native heath.”
“Shoot it! Shoot it!” cried Eva. “You poor boob, why don’t you shoot it?”
“Baldy’s gun shy,” he explained.
“Oh!” said Eva. “Yes, of course—I forgot.”
“One of the things you do best,” returned Custer loftily.
“I was just going to say that you were not a boob at all, but now I won’t!”
Shannon watched the gray, wolfish animal turn and trot off dejectedly until it disappeared among the brush; but she was not thinking of the coyote. She was considering the thoughtfulness of a man who could remember to forego a fair shot at a wild animal because one of the horses in his party was gun shy, and was ridden by a woman unaccustomed to riding. She wondered if this was an index to young Pennington’s character—so different from the men she had known. It bespoke a general attitude toward women with which she was unfamiliar—a protective instinct that was chiefly noticeable in the average city man by its absence.