She continued to be the theme of conversation at the dinner-table and yet remained unembarrassed, and gave back quite as good as she received.
If I was Cliff, declared one lanky admirer, Id be shot if I let you out of my sight. It aint safe.
She smiled broadly. I dont feel scared.
Oh, youre all right! Its the other feller like me that gets hurt.
Dont worry, youre old enough and tough enough to turn a steel-jacketed bullet.
This raised a laugh, and Mrs. Yancy, who was waiting on the table, put in a word: Ill board ye free, Berrie, if youll jest naturally turn up here regular at meal-time. You do take the fellers appetites. Its the only time I make a cent.
To the Eastern man this was all very unrestrained and deeply diverting. The people seemed to know all about one another notwithstanding the fact that they came from ranches scattered up and down the stage line twenty, thirty miles apart to be neighbors in this country means to be anywhere within a sixty-mile ride and they gossiped of the countryside as minutely as the residents of a village in Wisconsin discuss their kind. News was scarce.
The north-bound coach got away first, and as the girl came out to take her place, Norcross said: Wont you have my seat with the driver?
She dropped her voice humorously. No, thank you, I cant stand for Bills clack.
Norcross understood. She didnt relish the notion of being so close to the frankly amorous driver, who neglected no opportunity to be personal; therefore, he helped her to her seat inside and resumed his place in front.
Bill, now broadly communicative, minutely detailed his tastes in food, horses, liquors, and saddles in a long monologue which would have been tiresome to any one but an imaginative young Eastern student. Bill had a vast knowledge of the West, but a distressing habit of repetition. He was self-conscious, too, for the reason that he was really talking for the benefit of the girl sitting in critical silence behind him, who, though he frequently turned to her for confirmation of some of the more startling of his statements, refused to be drawn into controversy.
In this informing way some ten miles were traversed, the road climbing ever higher, and the mountains to right and left increasing in grandeur each hour, till of a sudden and in a deep valley on the bank of another swift stream, they came upon a squalid saloon and a minute post-office. This was the town of Moskow.
Bill, lumbering down over the wheel, took a bag of mail from the boot and dragged it into the cabin. The girl rose, stretched herself, and said: This stagin is slow business. Im cramped. Im going to walk on ahead.
May I go with you? asked Norcross.
Sure thing! Come along.
As they crossed the little pole
bridge which spanned the flood, the tourist exclaimed: What exquisite water! Its like melted opals.
Comes right down from the snow, she answered, impressed by the poetry of his simile.
He would gladly have lingered, listening to the song of the water, but as she passed on, he followed. The opposite hill was sharp and the road stony, but as they reached the top the young Easterner called out, See the savins!
Before them stood a grove of cedars, old, gray, and drear, as weirdly impressive as the cacti in a Mexican desert. Torn by winds, scarred by lightnings, deeply rooted, tenacious as tradition, unlovely as Egyptian mummies, fantastic, dwarfed and blackened, these unaccountable creatures clung to the ledges. The dead mingled horribly with the living, and when the wind arose the wind that was robustly cheerful on the high hills these hags cried out with low moans of infinite despair. It was as if they pleaded for water or for deliverance from a life that was a kind of death.
The pale young man shuddered. What a ghostly place! he exclaimed, in a low voice. It seems the burial-place of a vanished race.
Something in his face, some note in his voice profoundly moved the girl. For the first time her face showed something other than childish good nature and a sense of humor. I dont like these trees myself, she answered. They look too much like poor old squaws.
For a few moments the man and the maid studied the forest of immemorial, gaunt, and withered trees bright, impermanent youth confronting time-defaced and wind-torn age. Then the girl spoke: Lets get out of here. I shall cry if we dont.
In a few moments the dolorous voices were left behind, and the cheerful light of the plain reasserted itself. Norcross, looking back down upon the cedars, which at a distance resembled a tufted, bronze-green carpet, musingly asked: What do you suppose planted those trees there?
The girl was deeply impressed by the novelty of this query. I never thought to ask. I reckon they just grew.
No, theres a reason for all these plantings, he insisted.
We dont worry ourselves much about such things out here, she replied, with charming humor. We dont even worry about the weather. We just take things as they come.
They walked on talking with new intimacy. Where is your home? he asked.