"Because I was thinking," continued her tormentor—"I was thinking that if the exile, as Clara calls it, would be too severe on you, I might, if it was for your own good—I might send you back with the rest to Kentucky."
Then there was a raising of the head quick enough and a tempestuous flight across the space that separated them, and a flood of remonstrances that ended in happy laughter, a close clasp of arms, and—yes, in spite of the girl who was standing not very far away—a kiss; and Hardy circled his wife's shoulders with his long arms, and, with a glance of laughing defiance at his cousin, drew her closer and followed in the wake of the Houghtons.
The girl had deliberately stood watching that little scene with a curious smile in her eyes, a semi-cynical gaze at the lingering fondness of voice and touch. There was no envy in her face, only a sort of good-natured disbelief. Her cousin Clara always averred that Rachel was too masculine in spirit to ever understand the little tendernesses that burnish other women's lives.
CHAPTER IV.
BANKED FIRES.
She did not look masculine, however, as she stood there, slender, and brown from the tan of the winds; the unruly, fluffy hair clustering around a face and caressing a neck that was essentially womanly in every curve; only, slight as the form seemed, one could find strong points in the depth of chest and solid look of the shoulders; a veteran of the roads would say those same points in a bit of horse-flesh would denote capacity for endurance, and, added to the strong-looking hand and the mockery latent in the level eyes, they completed a personality that she had all her life heard called queer. And with a smile that reflected that term, she watched those two married lovers stroll arm in arm to where the freshly-killed deer lay. Glancing at the group, she missed the face of their guide, a face she had seen much of since that sunrise in the Kootenai. Across the sward a little way the horses were picketed, and Mowitza's graceful head was bent in search for the most luscious clusters of the bunch-grass; but Mowitza's master was not to be seen. She had heard him speak, the night before, of signs of grizzlies around the shank of the mountain, and wondered if he had started on a lone hunt for them. She was conscious of a half-resentful feeling that he had not given her a chance of going along, when he knew she wanted to see everything possible in this out-of-door life in the hills.
So, in some ill-humor, she walked aimlessly across the grass where Clara's lecture on the conventionalities had been delivered; and pushing ahead under the close-knit boughs, she was walking away from the rest, led by that spirit of exploration that comes naturally to one in a wilderness, and parting a wide-spreading clump of laurel, was about to wedge her way through it, when directly on the other side of that green wall she saw Genesee, whom she had supposed was alone after a grizzly. Was he asleep? He was lying face downward under the woven green roof that makes twilight in the cedars. The girl stopped, about to retrace her steps quietly, when a sudden thought made her look at him more closely, with a devout prayer in her heart that he was asleep, and asleep soundly; for her quick eyes had measured the short distance between that resting-place and the scene of the conversation of a few minutes ago. She tried wildly to remember what Clara had said about him, and, most of all, what answers Clara had received. She had no doubt said things altogether idiotic, just from a spirit of controversy, and here the man had been within a few feet of them all the time! She felt like saying something desperately, expressively masculine; but instead of easing her feelings in that manner, she was forced to complete silence and a stealthy retreat.
Was he asleep, or only resting? The uncertainty was aggravating. And a veritable Psyche, she could not resist the temptation of taking a last, sharp look. She leaned forward ever so little to ascertain, and thus lost her chance of retreating unseen; for among the low-hanging branches was one on which there were no needles of green—a bare, straggling limb with twigs like the fingers of black skeletons. In bending forward, she felt one of them fasten itself in her hair; tugging blindly and wildly, at last she loosened their impish clutches, and left as trophy to the tree some erratic, light-brown hair and—she gave up in despair as she saw it—her cap, that swung backward and forward, just out of reach.
If it only staid there for the present, she would not care so much; but it was so tantalizingly insecure, hanging by a mere thread, and almost directly above the man. Fascinated by the uncertainty, she stood still. Would it stay where it was? Would it fall?