The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop Part 23

She clapped her hands. "Do it! It will be like the knight in the story--the glove-and-lion story."

"No. On reflection, I will not run; it would compromise my dignity. We will climb soberly, side by side, like Darby and Joan on the hill of life."

With a demure countenance she took his hand, and they scrambled briskly up the slope. When they reached the brow of the hill she was fairly done up, while he, breathing easily, showed little fatigue, although she had felt his powerful arm sustaining her many times on the steeper slopes.

She could not speak, and he smilingly said, "I hope I haven't hurried you?"

"You--are--strong," she admitted, brokenly. "I'm not tired, but I can't get breath."

At length they reached the summit and looked about. "What is the meaning of those little towers of stone?" she asked, after a moment's rest.

"Oh, they have different meanings. Sometimes they locate the springs of water, sometimes they indicate the course of a trail. This one was put here by a young fellow to mark the spot from whence he saw a famous herd of buffalo--what time he made a wonderful killing."

"I suppose all this land has been the hunting-ground of these people for ages. Do you suppose they had names for hills like this, and were fond of them like white people?"

"Certainly. They had a geography of their own as complete in its way as ours, and they are wonderfully sure of direction even now. They seldom make a mistake in the correlative positions of streams or mountains, even when confused by a white man's map."

"It _is_ wonderful, isn't it--that they should have lived here all those years without knowing or caring for the white man's world?"

"They don't care for it now--but I see Two Horns signalling that breakfast is ready, so we had better go."

"Let's run down!"

"Wait!" He caught her. "It will lame you frightfully, I warn you."

"Oh no, it won't."

"Very well, experience is a fine school. If you must run down, we'll go down the shadowed side. Now I'll let you get half-way down and beat you in, after all. One, two, three--go!"

With her skirt caught up in her hand, she started down the hill in reckless flight. She heard his shout and the thud of his prodigious leaps, and just as she reached the level he overtook her and relentlessly left her far behind. Discouraged and panting, she fell into a walk and waited for him to return, as she knew he would.

"Oh, these skirts!" she said, resentfully. "What chance has a woman with yards of cloth binding her? I nearly tumbled headlong."

He did not make her suffer for her defeat, and they returned to camp gay as a couple of children. Lawson smiled benevolently, like an aged uncle, while Elsie told him of their climb. Said he: "When you're as old as I am you will wait for wonders to come your way; you will not seek them."

The breakfast was made merry by Jennie, who waged gentle warfare on Parker, whose preconceived ideas of the people resident on an Indian reservation had been shaken.

"Why, you're very decent," he admitted at last.

"They are all like us--nit," replied Jennie. "We're marked 'special.'"

"Couldn't be any more like you, sis," said Curtis.

"_You_ shouldn't say that."

"Well, it needed saying, and no one else seemed ready to do it. If Calvin had been here!"

"Who is Calvin?" asked Mrs. Parker.

"I know!" cried Elsie. "He's one of the handsomest young cowboys you ever saw. If you want to do a cow-puncher, Parker, he's your model."

"I certainly must see him. If I don't do a cowboy or a bucking bronco I'm a failure."

As they were ready to start, Elsie again took her place beside Curtis, but Lawson insisted on sitting behind with Jennie. "It's hard luck, Parker, to have to sit with your wife," he said, compa.s.sionately.

"Oh, well! I'm used to disappointments," Parker replied, in resigned calm.

Elsie felt the need of justifying herself. "Are you complaining? Am I the a.s.sistant driver, or am I not? If I am, here is where I belong."

"When I was coaching in Scotland once--" began Lawson.

"Oh, never mind Scotland!" interrupted Elsie. "See that chain of peaks?

Aren't they gorgeous! Do we camp there?"

"Yes," replied Curtis. "Just where that fan-shaped belt of timber begins, I hope to set our tent. The agency is just between those dark ridges."

"It is strange," Elsie said, after a pause. "Last year I was _wondering_ at everything; now I am looking for familiar things."

"That is the second stage," he answered. "The third will be sympathy."

"What will the fourth be?"

"Affection."

"And the fifth?"

"Devotion."

She laughed. "You place too high a value on your Western land."

"I admit there is to me great charm in these barren foot-hills and the great divide they lead up to," he soberly answered.

As they talked, the swift little horses drummed along the hard road, and by the time the agency flag-pole came in view they had pa.s.sed over their main points of difference, and were chatting gayly on topics not controversial. Elsie was taking her turn with the reins, her face flushed with the joy and excitement of it, while Jennie and Mrs.

Parker, shrieking with pretended fear, clung to their seats with frenzied clasp.

Curtis was as merry as a boy, and his people, seeing him come in smiling and alert, looked at each other in amazement, and Crow Wing said:

"Our Little Father has found a squaw at last."

Whereas, as her lover, Curtis had been careful to consider the effect of every word, he now went to Elsie's service as frankly as Lawson himself, and his thoughtfulness touched her deeply. Her old studio had been put in order, and contained all needful furniture, and her sleeping apartment looked very clean and very comfortable indeed.

Jennie apologized. "Of course, it's like camping compared to your own splendid home, but George said you wouldn't mind that, being an artist.

He has an idea an artist can sleep in a palace one night and a pigsty the next, and rejoice."

"He isn't so very far wrong," Elsie valiantly replied. "Of course, the pigsty is a little bit extreme. This is good enough for any one. You are very kind," she added, softly. "It was good of him to take so much trouble."

"George is the best man I ever knew," replied Jennie. "That's why I've never been able to leave him for any other man." She smiled shrewdly.

"I'll admit that eligible men have been scarce, and my chances have been few. Well, I must run across and look after dinner. You're to eat with us till you get settled. _We_ insist on being hosts this time."