A sudden electric tremor passed through the man’s nerves. He veiled his eyes for a moment that she might not see what flared into them. He rose with her.
“Get into your riding clothes and we’ll start. I’ll meet you with my horse in half an hour,” he said almost sternly.
But his eyes now answered her look of gratefulness and adoration with what she thought was a reflection of her own chaste desire.
So it came about that two other riders left Canyon Pass on this spring morning while the sun still lingered abed, and, crossing the West Fork an hour behind Andy McCann, unlike him chose the wagon-track to the summit of the canyon wall on that side of Runaway River.
“Which way do we go, Dick? To Crescent City?”
“South,” he returned, without looking at her.
“We-ell. Lamberton is further but there’s a parson there, too. That’s another reason why I’ve come to hate Canyon Pass. It isn’t decent like other towns—or even up-to-date. It never had a church or a parson. It’s got everything else—saloons, gambling halls, honkytonks, stores, a bank, a hotel, a stamp mill, an express office, even a school, such as it is. But it’s heathen—plumb heathen, Dick.”
He smiled at her then, rather a superior smile. “It’s not the only mining town that answers your description.”
“I know it,” Nell rejoined. “But I want to see the other kind of towns. Mother Tubbs says Canyon Pass ain’t got no heart, and she’s right. She says she can’t even tell when Sunday comes, only that Sam always comes home drunk that day. This is Sunday, Dick. It’s a good day on which to begin a new life.”
“Oh, life’s all right,” the gambler said easily. “Take it as you find it, Nell.”