The seductive mystery of the hills was beyond all words. A wonderful outlook of wide valleys, bounded in almost every direction by the vast incline of wood-clad hills, opened out a world that seemed to terminate abruptly everywhere, yet to go on and on in an endless series of great green valleys and mountain streams. Darkling wood-belts crept up the great hillsides, deep in mysterious shadows, stirring imagination, and carrying it back to all those haunting dreams of early childhood. For the most part these were all untrodden by human foot, and so their mystery deepened. Then above, often penetrating into the low-lying clouds, the crowning glory of alabaster peaks whose snowy sheen dazed the wondering eyes raised towards them.
In the valleys below, the green, the wonderful green, bright and delicate, and quite unfaded by the scorching sun of the prairie away beyond. Pastures beyond the dreams of all animal imagination in their humid richness. Water, too, and low, broken scrubs and woodland bluffs—one vast panorama of verdant beauty, such as only the eye of an artist or the heart of a ranchman could appreciate.
It was the setting of Silas Mallinsbee's ranch, that ranch which was more to him than all the world, except his motherless daughter. Gordon had seen it all as he rode out to spend the week-end on a ranch horse, placed by Mallinsbee at his disposal. He had marveled then at the delights spread out before his eyes. Now, on the Sunday morning, while he awaited breakfast, he wondered still more as he examined, even more closely, that wealth of natural splendor spread out for his delight.
He was lounging on the deep sun-sheltered veranda which faced the south. The ranch house was perched high up on the southern slope of one of the lesser hills. Above him the gentle morning breeze sighed in the rustling tree-tops of a great crowning woodland. Below him, and all around him, were the widespreading buildings and corrals of a great ranching enterprise. It seemed incredible to him that within twenty miles of him, away to the east, there could exist so mundane and sordid an undertaking as the Bude and Sideley Coal Company, and the vicious chorus of ground sharks which haunted Snake's Fall. He felt as though he were gazing out upon some enchanted valley of dreamland, where the soft breezes and glinting sunlight possessed a magic to rest the teeming energy of modern highly tuned brain and nerves.
Its seductiveness lulled him to a profound meditation, and into his dreaming stole the figure of the mistress of these miles of perfect beauty. Now he had some understanding of that fascinating buoyancy of spirit, the simple devotion with which she contemplated the life that claimed her. How could it be otherwise? Here was nature in all its wonders of simplicity, shedding upon the life sheltering at its bosom an equal simplicity, an equal strength, an equal singleness of mind with which it was itself endowed. He felt that if he, too, had been brought up in such surroundings no city flesh-pots could ever have offered him any fascination. He, too, must have felt that this—this alone was the real life of man.
The play of the dancing sunlight through the distant trees held his gaze. He forgot to smoke, he forgot everything except the beauty about him, the stirring ranch life below him, and the girl whose fascination was daily possessing a greater and greater hold upon him.
Then, quite gently, something else subtly merged itself with the pleasant tide of his meditations. It was the deep note of a voice which came from close beside him in a rolling bass that afforded no jar.
"A picture that's mighty hard to beat," it said.
Gordon nodded without turning.
"Sure."