“Oh,” she said, throwing back her head and laughing softly, “that was a long time ago. It is doubtless in the corral by now.”
As she spoke, Roderick dismounted. He was capable now of assimilating details, and noted the silken dark Egyptian locks that fell in fluffy waves over her temples in a most bewitching manner, and the eyes that shone with the deep dark blue of the sapphire. His gaze must have betrayed his admiration, for, courteously waving her hand, she touched with her spurs the flanks of her mount and bounded away across the hills. Roderick was left standing in wonderment.
“Who the dickens can she be?” he soliloquized. “I’ve been riding the range for a good many weeks, but this is the first time I’ve spotted this mountain beauty.”
Throwing himself onto his horse, he started down toward the south fork of the Encampment river and on to the westward the Shields ranch, wondering as he rode along who this strange girl of the hills could be. Once or twice he thought of Stella Rain and he manfully endeavored to keep his mind concentrated on the one to whom he was betrothed, running over in memory her last letter, reckoning the time that must elapse before the next one would arrive, recalling the tender incidents of their parting now two months ago. But his efforts were in vain. Always there kept recurring the vision of loveliness he had encountered on the range, and the mystery that surrounded the fair rider’s identity. Once again since Major Buell Hampton’s long diatribe on love and matrimony, he was vaguely conscious that his impetuous love-making on that memorable evening at Galesburg might have been a mistake, and that the little “college widow” in her unselfishness had spoken words of wisdom when she had counselled him to wait awhile—until he really did know his own mind—until he had really tried out his own heart, yes, until—Great heavens, he found himself recalling her very words, spoken with tears in her soft pretty eyes: “That’s just the trouble, Roderick. You do not know—you cannot make a comparison, nor you won’t know until the other girl comes along.”
Had the other girl at last come? But at the disloyal thought he spurred his horse to a gallop, and as he did so the first snowflakes of the coming storm fluttered cold and damp against his flushed cheeks. At last he thought of other things; he was wondering now, as he glanced around into the thickening atmosphere, whether all the stray mavericks were at last safe in the winter pastures and corrals.
CHAPTER XI.—WINTER PASSES
THAT night the big snow storm did indeed come, and when Roderick woke up next morning it was to find mountain and valley covered with a vast bedspread of immaculate white and the soft snowflakes still descending like a feathery down. The storm did not catch Mr. Shields unprepared; his vast herds were safe and snug in their winter quarters.
The break in the weather marked the end of Roderick’s range riding for the season. He was now a stock feeder and engaged in patching up the corrals and otherwise playing his part of a ranch hand. And with this stay-at-home life he found himself thinking more and more of the real mission that had brought him into this land of mountains. Nearly every night when his work was finished, he studied a certain map of the hills—the inheritance left him by his father. On this map were noted “Sheep Mountain,” “Bennet Peak,” “Hahn’s Peak” and several other prominent landmarks. From his own acquaintance with the country Roderick now knew that the lost valley was quite a distance to the south and west from the Shields ranch.