As he rounded the bend in the now overgrown track, which had once formed the main approach to the little ranch, and caught sight of the graceful fawn-clad figure moving about, he stood for a moment to feast his eyes upon the picture the girl made. She was all he had ever dreamed of in life. There was nothing of the delicate exotic here, none of the graceful gowning of a city, concealing an unhealthy body reduced almost to infirmity by the unwholesome night life of modern social demands. She was just a living example of the grace with which Nature so readily endows those who obey her wonderful, helpful laws. The perfect contours, the elasticity of gait, the clear, keen, beautiful eyes, and the pretty tanning under the shade of her wide-brimmed hat.
The beating of the man's heart quickened. All his feelings rose, and set him longing to tell her all that was in his heart. He wanted then and there to become her champion for all time. A great passionate wave set the warm blood of youth surging to his head. He felt that she belonged to him, and him alone. Had he not fought for her as those warriors of old would have done? Yes, somehow he felt that she was his, but, with a strange cowardice, he feared to put his fate to the test through words which could never express half of all he felt. He longed and feared, and he told himself——
But Hazel was looking in his direction. She saw him standing there, and peremptorily summoned him to her presence.
"For goodness' sake," she cried. "Dreaming when there's work to be done. Bring them right along, or we'll never get started. There's all twenty miles before supper."
Gordon hurried forward, and as he came up he made his excuses.
"I had to look," he said apologetically. "You see it isn't every day a feller gets a chance to see a real picture—like I've seen. Say, these hills, I guess, can hand all that Nature can paint that way, but you need a human life in it to make a picture real to just an ordinary man's eyes. I—had to look."
But Hazel seemed to have become suddenly aware of something of that which lay behind his words, and she hastily, and with flushed cheeks, turned to the work of saddling her horse. Gordon attempted to help, but she laughingly declined any aid. She pointed at the saddle bags on his saddle.
"They're packed," she said. "Say, I'll show you how to refold your blanket. This way."
Gordon spent some delicious moments struggling with his blanket under the girl's superintendence, and his regret was all too genuine when, at last, it was placed on Sunset's back with the saddle on the top of it. As for the mare, she was saddled and bitted in the time it took him to cinch Sunset up. By the time he had adjusted the bit Hazel was in the saddle, gazing down at his efforts with merry, laughing eyes.
"It does seem queer," she said. "Here are you, big and strong, and capable of most anything. Yet it puzzles you around a saddle—which is so simple."