While this mood was uppermost in him she felt reasonably safe. It was a phase of him she certainly did not mean to discourage. Besides, she had a youthful confidence in her powers that she was loath to give up without an effort to find the accessible side of his ruthless heart.
“I’ll try it; but you must help me when we come to the bad places,” she said.
“Sure thing! It’s a deal. You’re a right good mountaineer, I’ll bet.”
“Thank you ; but you had better save your compliments till I make good,” she told him, with the most piquant air of gayety in the world.
They started on horseback, following a mountain trail that zigzagged across the foothills toward the Crags. He had unearthed somewhere a boy’s saddle that suited her very well, and the pony she rode was one of the easiest she had ever mounted. At the end of an hour’s ride they left the horses and began the ascent on foot. It was a stiff climb, growing steeper as they ascended, but Helen Messiter had not tramped over golf links for nothing. She might grow leg weary,’ but she would not cry “Enough!” And he, on his part, showed the tactful consideration for the resources of her strength he had already taught her to expect from that other day’s experience on the plains. It was a very rare hand of assistance that he offered her, but often he stopped to admire the beautiful view that stretched for many miles below them, in order that she might get a minute’s breathing space.
Once he pointed out, far away on the horizon, a bright gleam that caught the sunlight like a heliograph.
“That’s the big rock slide back of the Lazy, D,” he explained.
She drew a long breath, and flashed a stealthy look at him.
“It’s a long way from here, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t find it so far last time I took the trip—not the last half of the journey, anyhow,” he answered.