"Into my own at last! And I'm still young enough to enjoy life—life—life!" Into Jim's slender figure, with its arms out-stretched to the past, which was to be his future, there leaped the fire of immortal youth. It was his moment of supreme exaltation.
Suddenly from the stable door opposite came a glad cry of "Daddy! daddy!" as Hal, attracted by the loud voice of Jim, peered from behind the door. Then the child darted across to his father, who still stood with his arms out-stretched to his dream, and clasped his knees. Frightened at the stranger's presence, Hal quickly buried his face against his father's body.
The ecstasy faded from Jim's eyes as the cry of the child brought him back from his dreams to the affairs of earth. Slowly and with infinite tenderness his eyes rested on the bent head of the child. The twilight, which is short in the Green River country, had slipped away, and the angry sun disappeared behind the mountains. Petrie noticed the chill in the air that comes at evening on the plains.
The cry of the child revealed a new phase of the situation. Silently he watched Jim, whose glance went towards the stable. He saw the figure of a beautiful Indian girl emerge, carrying a pail of milk. He saw the shudder that passed over Jim as Nat-u-ritch, unconscious that she was the central figure in a tragic moment, moved slowly before them to the cabin opposite. Her master was busy with the white man, so her eyes were lowered; she did not even call to the child to follow her. Jim's glance never left her until the door had closed. Then his eyes rested again tenderly on the little head which nestled against him, and a sigh broke from his lips. He stooped and drew the little hand in his as he turned the child towards Malcolm Petrie. The words of his glad dream seemed still filling the air as Jim said: "Petrie, you've come too late. That's what would have happened; it can never happen now."
Gently he urged the child forward as he said; "Hal, shake hands with Mr. Petrie. This is my son, Petrie."
CHAPTER XXII
The news was not so very surprising to Malcolm Petrie. In his years of practice as a solicitor many similar cases had come to his notice. He had often remonstrated at the folly of sending the younger son of a great family to these lands, and at the unwisdom of parents who found the problem of guiding a wayward boy too hard, and so let him go to the West, to be left to the mercy of its desolation and to the temptation of such entanglements. But that it would be a new difficulty he foresaw, and as he took the child's out-stretched hand he remembered the proud woman waiting at Fort Duchesne. To him, as a man of the world, the affair was understandable, but to Diana! He began to regret that she had come. There was no suggestion of these thoughts in his manner as he kindly said:
"How do you do, my little man?"
"How do you do, Mr. Petrie?" the child answered, and then ran back to his father's side.
The dark head with its faint trace of the Indian blood was extremely beautiful, but Malcolm Petrie noticed a much stronger predominance of the Wynnegate features.