A few miles out of Bear Tooth. Youre from the East, Bill says the far East, we call it.
From New Haven. Ive just finished at Yale. Have you ever been to New York?
Oh, good Lord, no! she answered, as though he had named the ends of the earth. My mother came from the South she was born in Kentucky that accounts for my name, and my father is a Missourian. Lets see, Yale is in the state of Connecticut, isnt it?
Connecticut is no longer a state; it is only a suburb of New York City.
Is that so? My geography calls it The Nutmeg State.
Your geography is behind the times. New York has absorbed all of Connecticut and part of Jersey.
Well, its all the same to us out here. Your whole country looks like the small end of a slice of pie to us.
Have you ever been in a city?
Oh yes, I go to Denver once in a while, and I saw St. Louis once; but I was only a yearling, and dont remember much about it. What are you doing out here, if its a fair question?
He looked away at the mountains. I got rather used up last spring, and my doctor said Id better come out here for a while and build up. Im going up to Meekers Mill. Do you know where that is?
I know every stove-pipe in this park, she answered. Joe Meeker is kind o related to me uncle by marriage. He lives about fifteen miles over the hill from Bear Tooth.
This fact seemed to bring them still closer together. Im glad of that, he said, pointedly. Perhaps I shall be permitted to see you now and again? Im going to be lonesome for a while, Im afraid.
Dont you believe it! Joe Meekers boys will keep you interested, she assured him.
The stage overtook them at this point, and Bill surlily remarked: If youd been alone, young feller, Id a give you a chase. His resentment of the outsiders growing favor with the girl was ludicrously evident.
As they rose into the higher levels the aspen shook its yellowish leaves in the breeze, and the purple foot-hills gained in majesty. Great new peaks came into view on the right, and the lofty cliffs of the Bear Tooth range loomed in naked grandeur high above the blue-green of the pines which clothed their sloping eastern sides.
At intervals the road passed small log ranches crouching low on the banks of creeks; but aside from these and the sparse animal life around them no sign of settlement
could be seen. The valley lay as it had lain for thousands of years, repeating its forests as the meadows of the lower levels send forth their annual grasses. Norcross said to himself: I have circled the track of progress and have re-entered the border America, where the stage-coach is still the one stirring thing beneath the sun.
At last the driver, with a note of exultation, called out: Grab a root, everybody, its all the way down-hill and time to feed.
And so, as the dusk came over the mighty spread of the hills to the east, and the peaks to the west darkened from violet to purple-black, the stage rumbled and rattled and rushed down the winding road through thickening signs of civilization, and just at nightfall rolled into the little town of Bear Tooth, which is the eastern gateway of the Ute Plateau.
Norcross had given a great deal of thought to the young girl behind him, and thought had deepened her charm. Her frankness, her humor, her superb physical strength and her calm self-reliance appealed to him, and the more dangerously, because he was so well aware of his own weakness and loneliness, and as the stage drew up before the hotel, he fervently said: I hope I shall see you again?
Before she could reply a mans voice called: Hello, there! and a tall fellow stepped up to her with confident mien.
Norcross awkwardly shrank away. This was her cowboy lover, of course. It was impossible that so attractive a girl should be unattached, and the knowledge produced in him a faint but very definite pang of envy and regret.
The happy girl, even in the excitement of meeting her lover, did not forget the stranger. She gave him her hand in parting, and again he thrilled to its amazing power. It was small, but it was like a steel clamp. Stop in on your way to Meekers, she said, as a kindly man would have done. You pass our gate. My father is Joseph McFarlane, the Forest Supervisor. Good night.
Good night, he returned, with sincere liking.
Who is that? Norcross heard her companion ask.
She replied in a low voice, but he overheard her answer, A poor lunger, bound for Meekers and Kingdom Come, Im afraid. He seems a nice young feller, too.
They always wait till the last minute, remarked the rancher, with indifferent tone.
II A RIDE IN THE RAIN
If you stand on one of the great naked crests which form the dividing wall, the rampart of the plains, you can see the Colorado of tradition to the west, still rolling in wave after wave of stupendous altitudes, each range cutting into the sky with a purple saw-tooth edge. The landscape seems to contain nothing but rocks and towering crags, a treasure-house for those who mine. But this is illusive. Between these purple heights charming valleys wind and meadows lie in which rich grasses grow and cattle feed.