Her protest died unspoken. She could not very well frame it in words, and before his bold, possessive eyes the girl’s long, dark lashes wavered to the cheeks into which the hot blood was beating. Nevertheless, the feeling existed that she wished one of the others had stayed instead of him. It was born, no doubt, partly of the wave of shyness 133 running through her, but partly too of instinctive maidenly resistance to something in his look, in the assurance of his manner, that seemed to claim too much. Last night he had taken her by storm and at advantage. Something of shame stirred in her that he had found her so easy a conquest, something too of a new vague fear of herself. She resented the fact that he could so move her, even though she still felt the charm of his personal presence. She meant to hold herself in abeyance, to make sure of herself and of him before she went further.
But the cowpuncher had no intention of letting her regain so fully control of her emotions. Experience of more than one young woman had taught him that scruples were likely to assert themselves after reflection, and he purposed giving her no time for that to-day.
He did not count in vain upon the intimacy of companionship forced upon them by the circumstances, nor upon the skill with which he knew how to make the most of his manifold attractions. His rôle was that of the comrade, gay with good spirits and warm with friendliness, solicitous of her needs, but not oppressively so. If her glimpse of him at breakfast had given the girl a vague alarm, she laughed her fears away later before his open good humor.
There had been a time when he had been a part of that big world “back in the States,” peopled so generously by her unfettered imagination. He knew 134 how to talk, and entertainingly, of books and people, of events and places he had known. She had not knowledge enough of life to doubt his stories, nor did she resent it that he spoke of this her native section with the slighting manner of one who patronized it with his presence. Though she loved passionately her Arizona, she guessed its crudeness, and her fancy magnified the wonders of that southern civilization from which it was so far cut off.
Farnum had left his horse for the girl, and after breakfast the cowpuncher saddled the broncos and brought them up. Melissy had washed the dishes, filled his canteen, and packed the saddle bags. Soon they were off, climbing slowly the trail that led up the cañon wall. She saw the carcass of a dead sheep lying on the rocks half way down the cliff, and had spoken of it before she could stop herself.
“What is that? Isn’t it——?”
“Looks to me like a boulder,” lied her escort unblushingly. There was no use, he judged, in recalling unpleasant memories.
Nor did she long remember. The dry, exhilarating sunshine and the sting of gentle, wide-swept breezes, the pleasure of swift motion and the ring of that exultingly boyish voice beside her, combined to call the youth in her to rejoice. Firm in the saddle she rode, as graceful a picture of piquant girlhood as could be conceived, thrilling to the silent voices of the desert. They traveled in a sunlit sea 135 of space, under a sky of blue, in which tenuous cloud lakes floated. Once they came on a small bunch of hill cattle which went flying like deer into the covert of a draw. A rattlesnake above a prairie dog’s hole slid into the mesquit. A swift watched them from the top of a smooth rock, motionless so long as they could see. She loved it all, this immense, deserted world of space filled with its multitudinous dwellers.
They unsaddled at Dead Cow Creek, hobbled the ponies, and ate supper. Norris seemed in no hurry to resaddle. He lay stretched carelessly at full length, his eyes upon her with veiled admiration. She sat upright, her gaze on the sunset with its splashes of topaz and crimson and saffron, watching the tints soften and mellow as dusk fell. Every minute now brought its swift quota of changing beauty. A violet haze enveloped the purple mountains, and in the crotch of the hills swam a lake of indigo. The raw, untempered glare of the sun was giving place to a limitless pour of silvery moonlight.
Her eyes were full of the soft loveliness of the hour when she turned them upon her companion. He answered promptly her unspoken question.