The air was becoming warmer, but it was so wonderfully clear that even things in the far distance stood out with remarkable detail.
At a curve, Gerald pointed to the road where it circled above them. “Gee-whiliker! Look-it!” he cried excitedly. “How that boy can ride.” The others, turning, saw a pony which seemed to be running at breakneck speed, but as the stage appeared around the bend, the small horse was halted so suddenly that it reared. When it settled back on all fours, the watchers saw that, instead of a boy, the rider was a girl, slender of build, wiry, alert. She drew to one side close to the mountain, to permit the stage to pass. She wore a divided skirt of the coarsest material, a scarlet blouse but no hat. Her glossy black wind-blown hair fluttered loosely about her slim shoulders. Her dusky eyes looked curiously out at them from between long curling lashes. Dan thought he had never before seen such wonderful eyes, but it only took a moment for the stage to pass.
They all turned to look down the road. The pony was again leaping ahead as sure-footed, evidently, as a mountain goat, the girl leaning low in the saddle. Jane’s lips were curled scornfully. “Well, if that is their mountain beauty, I think they have queer taste! She looked to me very much like an Indian, didn’t she to you, Dan?”
The boy replied frankly: “I should say she might be Spanish or French, but I do indeed think she is wonderfully beautiful. I never saw such eyes. They seem to have slumbering soul-fires just waiting to be kindled. I should like to hear her talk.”
Jane shrugged her shoulders. “Well, I certainly should not. I have heard enough of this mountain dialect, if that’s what you call it, to last me the rest of my life. I simply will not make the acquaintance of that—Oh, it doesn’t matter what she is—” she hurried on to add when she saw that Dan was about to speak. “I don’t want to know her, and do please remember that, all of you!”
“Gee, sis,” Gerald blurted out, “you don’t like the West much, do you? I s’pose you wish you had stayed at home or gone to that hifalutin watering place.”
Jane bit her lips to keep from retorting angrily. Julie was still watching the small horse that now and then reappeared as the zigzagging mountain road far below them came in sight.
“That girl’s going to school, I guess. Though I should think it would be vacation time, now it’s summer,” she remarked.
“I rather believe that winter is vacation time for mountain schools. It’s mighty cold here for a good many months and the roads are probably so deep in snow that they are not passable.”
Dan had just said this when Gerald, who had been kneeling on the seat, watching intently ahead, whirled toward them with a cry of joy. “There’s our log cabin on that ledge up there! I bet you ’tis! Gee-whiliker, we’re stopping. Hurray! It’s ours.”