Brand Blotters

But the cowpuncher had no intention of letting her regain so fully control

of her emotions. Experience of more than one young woman had taught him

that scruples were likely to assert themselves after reflection, and he

purposed giving her no time for that to-day.

He did not count in vain upon the intimacy of companionship forced upon

them by the circumstances, nor upon the skill with which he knew how to

make the most of his manifold attractions. His rôle was that of the

comrade, gay with good spirits and warm with friendliness, solicitous of

her needs, but not oppressively so. If her glimpse of him at breakfast had

given the girl a vague alarm, she laughed her fears away later before his

open good humor.

There had been a time when he had been a part of that big world "back in

the States," peopled so generously by her unfettered imagination. He knew

how to talk, and entertainingly, of books and people, of events and

places he had known. She had not knowledge enough of life to doubt his

stories, nor did she resent it that he spoke of this her native section

with the slighting manner of one who patronized it with his presence.

Though she loved passionately her Arizona, she guessed its crudeness, and

her fancy magnified the wonders of that southern civilization from which

it was so far cut off.

Farnum had left his horse for the girl, and after breakfast the cowpuncher

saddled the broncos and brought them up. Melissy had washed the dishes,

filled his canteen, and packed the saddle bags. Soon they were off,

climbing slowly the trail that led up the cañon wall. She saw the carcass

of a dead sheep lying on the rocks half way down the cliff, and had spoken

of it before she could stop herself.

"What is that? Isn't it----?"

"Looks to me like a boulder," lied her escort unblushingly. There was no

use, he judged, in recalling unpleasant memories.

Nor did she long remember. The dry, exhilarating sunshine and the sting of

gentle, wide-swept breezes, the pleasure of swift motion and the ring of

that exultingly boyish voice beside her, combined to call the youth in her

to rejoice. Firm in the saddle she rode, as graceful a picture of piquant

girlhood as could be conceived, thrilling to the silent voices of the

desert. They traveled in a sunlit sea of space, under a sky of blue, in

which tenuous cloud lakes floated. Once they came on a small bunch of hill

cattle which went flying like deer into the covert of a draw. A

rattlesnake above a prairie dog's hole slid into the mesquit. A swift

watched them from the top of a smooth rock, motionless so long as they

could see. She loved it all, this immense, deserted world of space filled

with its multitudinous dwellers.