“Oh, thanks; we must have a gallop to-morrow and show Mr. Redgrave our solitary landscape. That will be one ripple on the Dead Sea.”
Life seemed capable of gayer aspects, even upon the Warroo, as next morning three residents of that far region rode lightly along the prairie trail. The day was cool and breezy; a great wind had come roaring up from the south the evening before, crashing through the far woods and audible in mighty tones for many a mile before it stirred the streamers of the couba trees, as they all sat under the verandah in the sultry night. Then the glorious coolness of the sea-breeze, almost the savour of the salt sea-foam and of the dancing wavelets, smote upon their revived senses. Hence, this day was cool, bracing, with a clear sky and a sighing breeze. Jack was young, and extremely susceptible. Maud Stangrove was a peerless horsewoman, and as she caused Mameluke, a noble old fleabitten gray, descendant of Satellite, to plunge and caracole, every movement of her supple figure, as she swayed easily to each playful bound, completed the sum of his admiration and submission.
“Oh, what a day it is!” said she. “Why don’t we have such weather more often? I feel like that boy in Nick of the Woods, when he jumps on his horse to ride after the travellers whom the Indians are tracking, and who shouts out a war-whoop from pure glee and high spirits. ‘Wagh! wagh! wagh! wagh!’ Don’t you remember it, Mr. Redgrave?”
“Oh yes, quite well.” Jack had read nearly all the novels in the world, and, if any good could have been done by a competitive examination in light reading, would have come out senior wrangler. “Nick of the Woods was very powerfully written—that is, it was a good book; so was the Hawks of Hawk Hollow. Dick Bruce was the boy’s name.”
“Of course. I see you know all about him, and Big Tom Bruce is the one that was shot, and didn’t tell them that he had a handful of slugs in his breast till after the Indian town is taken, and then he falls down, dying. Grand fellow, is not he? Nothing of that sort in our wretched country, is there?”
“We had a little fighting at that Murdering Lake we are going to,” said Mark. “Nothing very wonderful. But my horse was speared under me, and he remembered it for the rest of his life. Red Bob was killed; however, as he said before he died, it wasn’t ‘twenty to one, or anything near it.’ He had shot scores of blacks, if his own and others’ tales were true.”
“And why were you engaged in your small war, Master Mark?” demanded Maud. “It’s all very well to talk about Indians, and so on, but what had these miserable natives done to you?”
“They were not so miserable in those days,” said her brother; “this tribe was strong and numerous. I would have shirked it if possible; but they speared a lot of the cattle and one of the men. We had to fight or give them up the run.”
“The old story of Christianity and civilization? However I know you would not have hurt a hair of their red-ochred locks if you could have avoided it. Indeed, I wonder you kept your own scalp safe in those days. The most simple savage might have circumvented you, I’m sure, you good, easy-going, unsuspicious, conscientious old goose that you are.”
Here another expression, which Jack preferred much to those more animated glances which opposition had called forth, came over her features; as she gazed at her brother a soft light seemed gradually to arise and overspread her whole countenance, till her eyes rested with an expression of deep unconscious tenderness upon the bronzed, calm face of Mark Stangrove. “I wonder if anything in the whole world could lead to her looking at me like that?” thought Jack.