“No, no!” laughingly rejoined he. “That is but a mistaken belief on the part of Zeb Stump, who judges my skill by comparison, making use of his own as a standard.”
“Is it modesty?” reflected the Creole. “Or is this man mocking me? If I thought so, I should go mad!”
“Perhaps you are anxious to get back to your party?” said Maurice, observing her abstracted air. “Your father may be alarmed by your long absence? Your brother—your cousin—”
“Ah, true!” she hurriedly rejoined, in a tone that betrayed either pique, or compunction. “I was not thinking of that. Thanks, sir, for reminding me of my duty. Let us go back!”
Again in the saddle, she gathered up her reins, and plied her tiny spur—both acts being performed with an air of languid reluctance, as if she would have preferred lingering a little longer in the “mustang trap.”
Once more upon the prairie, Maurice conducted his protégée by the most direct route towards the spot where they had parted from the picnic party.
Their backward way led them across a peculiar tract of country—what in Texas is called a “weed prairie,” an appellation bestowed by the early pioneers, who were not very choice in their titles.
The Louisianian saw around her a vast garden of gay flowers, laid out in one grand parterre, whose borders were the blue circle of the horizon—a garden designed, planted, nurtured, by the hand of Nature.
The most plebeian spirit cannot pass through such a scene without receiving an impression calculated to refine it. I’ve known the illiterate trapper—habitually blind to the beautiful—pause in the midst of his “weed prairie,” with the flowers rising breast high around him, gaze for a while upon their gaudy corollas waving beyond the verge of his vision; then continue his silent stride with a gentler feeling towards his fellow-man, and a firmer faith in the grandeur of his God.
“Pardieu! ’tis very beautiful!” exclaimed the enthusiastic Creole, reining up as if by an involuntary instinct.