"Going off alone into the wilderness with me. We will be dependent on each other. No little 'convenances' in the woods, you know."
"I'm not afraid. I'd go alone with my maid, and you would be some protection."
He laughed, but not too readily.
They set out next day, both too tired for any sense of adventure. Bob had the drawing-room, and Paul wandered in and out, interrupting her reading. The trip west, beyond Chicago, was uneventful and hot. It was only when they arrived at Loveland, where they took the motor into the Park, that their interest began to awaken.
The ride into Estes along the narrow roads, winding between high cliffs on one side, the roaring, foaming, booming Big Thompson River on the other—higher and higher and wilder as it winds—whipped Bob's spirits into a froth of talk and laughter. Paul was conscious of a sense of peril in her nearness, in her charm. He warned himself of the great disadvantage of being the one of them who cared. "We start even," he had said on that eventful day. "I wonder how we'll end?" he mused, looking into her vivid face.
"Odds on the Irish," she laughed, reading his thoughts. Whereupon he blushed guiltily.
III
They came into the valley itself, beyond the town of Estes, at sunset, and Bob gasped with the glory of it. A long strip of fertile green land, with the river winding across it many times, like a satin ribbon. The massive mountains of the Great Divide, snow-capped, pink-tipped, in the setting sun, stood guard over the valley like watchmen. As Paul watched Barbara's face he thought it was like a prayer of exultation.
They drew up to the long, low brown ranch house and were welcomed by the proprietor.
"Mighty glad to meet ye and have ye with us. Ye didn't say what size cabin ye wanted, but I took ye for a bride an' groom, and gave ye what the boys call the 'Bridal soot.'"