Rose defended the right of a girl to earn her own living. He hastened to explain further:
"Of course a woman should be free and independent, but is she free when pressure forces her into typewriting or working in a sweat-shop?"
Rose turned his thoughts at last by asking about the West. He expanded like flame at the thought.
"Ah! the old equatorial wind is blowing today, and my hair crackles with electricity." He smiled as he ran his hands through his hair. "On such days I long for my pony again. Sometimes, when I can't stand it any longer, I take a train to some little station and go out and lie flat down on the grass on my back, so that I can't see anything but sky; then I can almost imagine myself back again where the lone old peaks bulge against the sky. Do you know John Muir and Joaquin Miller?"
Rose shook her head. His eyes glowed with enthusiasm.
"There are two men who know the wilderness. Your Thoreau I've read, but he don't interest me the way these Rocky Mountain fellows do. Your eastern fellows don't really know a wilderness—they're sort o' back pasture explorers. John isn't a bit theatrical, he's been there. He doesn't take a train of guides to explore a glacier, he sticks a crust of bread in his belt along with a tin cup, and goes alone. I've been with John in the Sierras, and once he came over into my range."
Rose defended Emerson and Thoreau as if she were the easterner this Colorado hunter considered her. As she talked he fixed great absent-minded eyes upon her, and absorbed every line of her face, every curve of her lips—every changing wave of color.
"I don't care for the wilderness as you do. What is a bird compared to a man, anyway? I like people. I want to be where dramas are being played. Men make the world, bears don't." She ended hotly.
He slowly withdrew his gaze.
"I guess you're right." He smiled a wise smile. "If the wilderness had been everything in the world, I wouldn't be here. A woman is more than a flower. A woman would make my mountains a paradise."