“But I ain’t American. I was born in Cornwall. Went to Colorado in ’82 and sailed round 61 in a prairie schooner, with wild Injuns after our scalps. I reckon that was no picnic for my people. I was a little fellow then—not big enough to tell an Injun from a bear. We didn’t find gold, but we found God’s own country. Wal, I can’t remember much about it—thank God, I can’t remember much.”
She looked at him, amazed by the tenseness of his words.
“What don’t you wish to remember?”
His brows contracted and the big hands closed till the knuckles almost penetrated the skin that covered them.
“The Injuns got us in the end,” he said huskily. “I jest remember the huge red sun going down on the prairie, with the wagon and two tents down by a stream, where the horses were watering. There was a kind o’ grotto affair beyond the stream. Old Sam, the driver, came and yanked me into that. I was young, but I savvied what it meant.... It was hell arter that—shooting and screaming.... When I came out.... When I came out....”
He said no more. His eyes were staring into nothingness as through his brain flashed the 62 dreadful scene of youth. He remembered running and crying—running and crying into the wilderness until a party of emigrants rescued him from madness.
Angela sat with parted lips. It was strange to be sitting there listening to such horrors. She was conscious of the giant personality behind his nervousness. The great voice commanded her attention. In those few moments she was afraid of him.
“Let us go in,” she said.
The rest of the evening was a dream to Jim. Occasionally people stared at him as though he were a creature from a menagerie, and several adventurous folks actually talked with him. But all this was like a hazy background against which shone the almost unearthly beauty of Angela. A new phase had been entered in the life of Colorado Jim. Passion, long dampered down by wild living and arduous toil, leaped up in one soul-consuming flame. He was in love with a woman—a woman as far above him, and as unattainable as a star. He moved about like a drunken man, bewildered by this new and terrible desire. 63
“What do you think of Angy?” queried Claude.