Jim had ridden close up to her. Now he leaned down from his horse and lifted her up in the saddle with him. "Let's don't go in to the house now, Ruth," he whispered. "I want to ride with you, alone."
Ruth did not have to speak, for she yielded herself utterly to Jim's strength and tenderness. With a touch to his horse the man and woman rode on, feeling the night wind of the prairies with its thousand fragrances blow over them; seeing the sky with its ten million stars above them and the great wide sweep of the open country beneath.
"It has been more than a week, Ruth, and I am weary of waiting," Jim said, when his horse grew tired and they were moving toward home.
She turned her face toward him, flushed now with the joy of the night and the stars and the new love that enthralled her. "You know I love you, Jim," she murmured caressingly, "and I would rather be your wife than any man's in the world."
After this there did not seem to be need for speech; but the man walked his horse slowly, hoping that it might take forever before they reached home.
Then Ruth said carelessly, because the tramp's story had passed out of her thoughts until this moment: "Jim, don't be angry—I didn't want to listen, but you must make that fellow, Joe Dawson, stop telling dreadful stories about you. Why, I met him to-night and he told me such absurd things. He said——"
Suddenly the man's arm stiffened about the woman he loved. "He said what, Ruth?" Jim Colter inquired with a new note in his voice.
Ruth laughed nervously and clung more closely to him, as though she feared to slip from her seat. "Just that your name was John Carter and not Jim Colter. Please don't make me tell you any more of his stories," she begged.
"I would like to hear all, Ruth; it will be better for us in the end," Jim insisted.
"But I'm ashamed," the girl argued, "because it is so utterly unlike you or anything you could do. You know, I believe you are the soul of honor, Jim, yet this man said you had stolen money when you were a young man, and run away from home to hide."