Mary was aware that some sinister change had come over him, and she paused to study him keenly. The tremulous quality of his voice and action had passed away. He was hard, stern, self-contained, and she (without being a coquette) determined that his mood should give way to hers. He set himself hard against the charm of her lovely presence and the dainty room. Mary ceased to smile, but her brows remained level.
"You men seem to think that all women are fond only of the quiet things, but it isn't true. We like the big deeds in the open air, too. I'd like to see a cattle ranch and take a look at a 'round-up,' though I don't know exactly what that means."
"Well, we're not on the round-up all the time," he said, relaxing a little. "It's pretty quiet part of the time; that is, quiet for our country. But then, you're always on a horse and you're out in the air on the plains with the mountains in sight. There's a lot of hard work about it, too, and it's lonesome sometimes when your're ridin' the lines, but I like it. When it gets a little too tame for me I hit the trail for the mountains with an Indian. The Ogallalahs are my friends, and I'm going to spend the winter with them and then go into the West Elk country. I'm due to kill a grizzly this year and some mountain sheep." He was started now, and Mary had only to listen. "Before I stop, I'm going to know all there is to know of the Rocky Mountains. With ol' Kintuck and my Winchester I'm goin' to hit the sunset trail and hit it hard. There's nothing to keep me now," he said with a sudden glance at her. "It don't matter where I turn up or pitch camp. I reckon I'd better not try to be a cattle king." He smiled bitterly and pitilessly at the poor figure he cut. "I reckon I'm a kind of a mounted hobo from this on."
"But your father and sister——"
"Oh, she isn't worryin' any about me; I haven't had a letter from her for two years. All I've got now is Jack, and he'd be no earthly good on the trail. He'd sure lose his glasses in a fight, and then he couldn't tell a grizzly from a two-year-old cow. So you see, there's nothing to hinder me from going anywhere. I'm footloose. I want to spend one summer in the Flat Top country. Ute Jim tells me it's fine. Then I want to go into the Wind River Mountains for elk. Old Talfeather, chief of the Ogallalahs, has promised to take me into the Big Horn Range. After that I'm going down into the southwest, down through the Uncompagre country. Reynolds says they're the biggest yet, and I'm going to keep right down into the Navajo reservation. I've got a bid from old Silver Arrow, and then I'm going to Walpi and see the Mokis dance. They say they carry live rattlesnakes in their mouths. I don't believe it: I'm going to see. Then I swing 'round to the Grand Cañon of the Colorado. They say that's the sorriest gash in the ground that ever happened. Reynolds gave me a letter to old Hance; he's the man that watches to see that no one carries the hole away. Then I'm going to take a turn over the Mohave desert into Southern California. I'm due at the Yosemite Valley about a year from next fall. I'll come back over the divide by way of Salt Lake."
He was on his feet, and his eyes were glowing. He seemed to have forgotten all women in the sweep of his imaginative journey.
"Oh, that will be grand! How will you do it?"
"On old Kintuck, if his legs don't wear off."
"How will you live?"