"You're going to Kusiak, aren't you? Do you know anybody there?" replied Elliot.
"My cousin lives there, but I haven't seen her since I was ten. She's an American. Eleven years ago she visited us in Ireland."
"I'm glad you know some one," he said. "You'll not be so lonesome with some of your people living there. I have two friends at Kusiak—a girl I used to go to school with and her husband."
"Are you going to live at Kusiak?"
"No; but I'll be stationed in the Territory for several months. I'll be in and out of the town a good deal. I hope you'll let me see something of you."
The fine Irish coloring deepened in her cheeks. He had a way of taking in his stride the barriers between them, but it was impossible for her to feel offended at this cheery, vigorous young fellow with the winning smile and the firm-set jaw. She liked the warmth in his honest brown eyes. She liked the play of muscular grace beneath his well-fitting clothes. The sinuous ease of his lean, wide-shouldered body stirred faintly some primitive instinct in her maiden heart. Sheba did not know, as her resilient muscles carried her forward joyfully, that she was answering the call of youth to youth.
Gordon respected her shyness and moved warily to establish his contact. He let the talk drift to impersonal topics as they picked their way out from the town along the mossy trail. The ground was spongy with water. On either side of them ferns and brakes grew lush. Sheba took the porous path with a step elastic. To the young man following she seemed a miracle of supple lightness.
The trail tilted up from the lowlands, led across dips, and into a draw. A little stream meandered down and gurgled over rocks worn smooth by ages of attrition. Alders brushed the stream and their foliage checkered the trail with sunlight and shadow.
They were ascending steadily now along a pathway almost too indistinct to follow. The air was aromatic with pine from a grove that came straggling down the side of a gulch to the brook.