The kneeling woman then arose and, turning, came towards him swiftly. A tall, stately figure of a woman, with a kind, strong, sweet face; the tumbled masses of her glossy, raven-hued hair all floating and rippling about her regal shoulders and white columnar throat.
Near she drew to him—nearer. She stretched out her bare rounded arms to him with a little happy loving cry as she smiled into his eyes, and he saw the splendor and glory of the world in hers.
While, far away in his ears, rang the echo of his own voice calling upon a woman’s name—wonderingly, passionately—“Mary!... Mary!... Mary!...”
CHAPTER XX
The wild hawk to the wind-swept sky,
The deer to the wholesome wold,
And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid
As it was in the days of old.
The heart of a man to the heart of a maid—
Light of my tents, be fleet!
Morning waits at the end of the world;
And the world is all at our feet.
—Kipling
“Wake up, Johnny, yu’ old fool!... don’t yu’ start in to lazy on me or I’ll—”
Here Ellis shrewdly pinched his mount’s withers, causing that animal to flatten his ears and nip playfully at his rider’s knee.
“Look out, doggone it! If I happen to get a bit absent-minded at times, yu’ needn’t follow suit!” he exclaimed sharply, as he jerked his horse away from the edge of a small, but wicked muskeg, around which the trail that led to the Trainors’ ranch circled. “I sure don’t want to be getting in the soup like Jim McCloud did that time, on this day of all days. I’ll hand yu’ over to Mary, begad!... she’ll teach yu’ to ‘soldier,’ yu’ old sucker!”
It was a glorious sunshiny afternoon, and the light cool breeze sent the occasional little tufts of fleecy-white clouds scudding across the turquoise-blue sky, and waved and brushed the surface of the long prairie grass as if with an invisible hand. To the gait of his horse Ellis whistled to himself—happily—half dreamily, as if he voiced some inner thought—an old, long-forgotten air, presently breaking into its words:
“Sae kind, kind and gentle it she,
Kind is my Mary;
The tender blossom on the tree,
Cannot compare wi’ Mary.”