The clods that fell upon ner coffin sounded a plaintive requiem over the remains of an erring woman. However, they stilled the tongue of gossip. The captain may have been weak in his great forgiveness, but his was a weakness tempered with much mercy.
CHAPTER XXXIII.—A RIDE AMONG SUNFLOWERS
WHEN Mrs. Horton learned of the flight of Lord Avondale and of the death of her friend, Lucy Osborn, she was prostrated with grief and chagrin. The Englishman had sent her a hastily-scrawled note, briefly stating that he released her daughter from their engagement, and that his immediate departure was of the greatest importance.
A few mornings after this, Ethel asked her father if she might go with him on a trip that he had planned to the Cimarron River. “I just feel, daddy,” said she, “like taking a wild ride down the valley. It will do me good. Mamma is much improved, and I can go as well as not.” The cattle king looked at his daughter with delighted astonishment. “Go? Of course you may,” said he. “Why, Ethel, you are beginning to look like yourself again. It will seem like old times to have my little girl galloping over the range with me.”
Soon they mounted their horses, and were off for an all-day jaunt. Ethel rode her horse with queenly grace, and, as they dashed along, the color came back into her velvet cheeks, and her face beamed once more with girlish delight. Occasionally a long-eared jack-rabbit would be startled from his cover, and go skipping away like a deer, while Ethel would rein her horse after him in a wild, mad gallop, not with any expectation of overtaking the rabbit, but simply in a spirit of frolicsome excitement.
“Look at the sunflowers, daddy!” exclaimed Ethel. “What a wonderful wealth of them!”
“Yes,” replied her father, “the sunflower, you know, is the emblem of our State. It grows here in generous profusion, and is certainly as emblematic of plenty, for the cattlemen at least, as the seeds of the pomegranate.”
As they advanced toward the Cimarron River, the fields of sunflowers grew more plentiful, and finally they found themselves in a veritable wilderness of this Kansas emblem. Hundreds of acres stretched away, thickly peopled with these blazing sun-worshipers, ever turning and following with their queenly heads the course of the king of day. The darkened multitude of seeds, like black-eyed-susans, were encircled with bordering crowns of yellowest gold. The gentle wind stirred them into rythmic melody of motion. Every petal seemed to have caught the sunshine of heaven, and to hold within its gracefully nodding head a warmth of welcome to the visitor. The brown stalks were suggestive of brawny health and strength, while their fanlike leaves presented an unrivaled background to the golden grandeur of a waving sea of yellow. They resembled an army of officers with a burnished epaulet on every shoulder.