“I hate to see all the wild life killed off. Some day all these forests will have game refuges like the Yellowstone National Park. They are coming each year to have greater and greater value to the people of the plains. They are playgrounds, like the Alps. Campers are coming into my valley every day, and, while they increase the danger of fires, I welcome them. They are all advocates of the forest. As one man said: ‘The mountains supplement the plains. They give color and charm to the otherwise monotonous West.’ I confess I couldn’t live on the prairies—not even on the plains—if out of sight of the mountains. If I should ever settle down to a home it would be in a canon like this, with a great peak at my front door.”
“It is beautiful,” the girl said, in the tone of sadness with which we confront the perfect night, the perfect flower, the flawless landscape. “It is both grand and peaceful.”
This tone of sadness pleased him. It showed her depth of perception, and he reflected that she had not uttered a vacuous or silly phrase since their first meeting. “She is capable of great development,” he thought. Aloud he said: “You are a strange mingling of East and West. Do you realize it?”
“In what way?” she asked, feeling something ardent in his tone.
“You typify to me at this moment this whole State. You fill me with enthusiasm for its future. Here you are, derived from the lawless West, yet taking on the culture and restraint of the East so readily that you seem not in the least related to—”
He checked himself at this point, and she said: “My mother is not as rough as she seems, Mr. Cavanagh.”
“She must be more of the woman than appears, or she could not have borne such a daughter. But do you feel your relationship to her? Tell me honestly, for you interest me.”
“I didn’t at first, but I do now. I begin to understand her, and, besides, I feel in myself certain things that are in her, though I think I am more like the Wetherfords. My father’s family home was in Maryland.”
Ross could have talked on all night, so alluring was the girl’s dimly-seen yet warmly-felt figure at his side, but a sense of danger and a knowledge that he should be riding led him at last to say: “It is getting chill, we must go in; but before we do so, let me say how much I’ve enjoyed seeing you again. I hope the doctor will make favorable report on your mother’s case. You’ll write me the result of the examination, won’t you?”
“If you wish me to.”