There was a forest that always intrigued her. The trail led them down cathedral aisles to the bank of a murmurous stream. To this they journeyed to-day; and, when within sound of the river, Betty drew her mount to a stand.
“It is beautiful, Mr. Hurley,” she sighed. “I do not wonder that you so love this out-of-door life and this wilderness. And then you have always been used to it. It does make a difference where one is born.”
“You said it!” returned Hurley emphatically. “I pretty near stifle when I get into a city and have to stay a spell. When I get back to this I feel like a boy again.” He smiled reflectively. “The bard of ‘Cactus Center’ hits off my feelings to a fare-ye-well,” and he proceeded to repeat from “The Forester’s Return:”
“‘I’m back on the job by the singing river,
Far from the town with its money-mad,
Back where the quaking aspens quiver—
And I’m glad.
There’s work to do and there’s work in plenty,
And it’s sleep in the open if fate so wills;
But no man is more than one-and-twenty
In the hills.’”
“That is fine!” Betty cried with enthusiasm, her eyes sparkling as they seldom did. “Why, I can almost feel that way myself, sometimes.”
There was a drop in her tone at the end. She looked away and, had he been able to see into her eyes then, he would have beheld a much different expression in their dimmed depths.
“You’d feel like it always if you’d just let yourself, Miss Betty,” Hurley said, with sudden warmth.
She smiled a little doubtfully, but turned toward him again, having recovered her composure. Joe’s eyes glowed and a strange pallor rose under his tan.
“Just think of living out here all your days and enjoying every moment of them! It’s rough, I know, and sort of untamed. But it’s a good life, Miss Betty—a wonderful life!”
“You—you almost convince me,” she stammered, laughing a little uncertainly, yet gazing at him with a dawning light in her eyes that Joe had not seen there before.