The Claim Jumpers

"I don't know then," he confessed with some helplessness.

"I'll tell you what I've always wanted to be called," said she, "ever

since I was a little girl. It is 'Mary.'"

"Mary!" he cried, astonished. "Why, it is such a common name."

"It is a beautiful name," she asserted. "Say it over. Aren't the

syllables soft and musical and caressing? It is a lovely name. Why I

remember," she went on vivaciously, "a girl who was named Mary, and who

didn't like it. When she came to our school she changed it, but she

didn't dare to break it to the family all at once. The first letter

home she signed herself 'Mae.' Her father wrote back, 'My dear

daughter, if the name of the mother of Jesus isn't good enough for you,

come home.'" She laughed at the recollection.

"Then you have been away to school?" asked the young man.

"Yes," she replied shortly.

She adroitly led him to talk of himself. He told her naively of New

York and tennis, of brake parties and clubs, and even afternoon teas

and balls, all of which, of course, interested a Western girl

exceedingly. In this it so happened that his immaturity showed more

plainly than before. He did not boast openly, but he introduced

extraneous details important in themselves. He mentioned knowing

Pennington the painter, and Brookes the writer, merely in a casual

fashion, but with just the faintest flourish. It somehow became known

that his family had a crest, that his position was high; in short, that

he was a de Laney on both sides. He liked to tell it to this girl,

because it was evidently fresh and new to her, and because in the

presence of her inexperience in these matters he gained a confidence in

himself which he had never dared assume before.

She looked straight in front of her and listened, throwing in a

comment now and then to assist the stream of his talk. At last, when he

fell silent, she reached swiftly out and patted his cheek with her

hand.

"You are a dear big boy," she said quietly. "But I like it--oh, so

much!"

From the tree tops below the clear warble of the purple finch

proclaimed that under the fronds twilight had fallen. The vast green

surface of the hills was streaked here and there with irregular peaks

of darkness dwindling eastward. The sun was nearly down.

A sudden gloom blotted out the fretwork of the pine shadows that had,

during the latter part of the afternoon, lain athwart the rock. They

looked up startled.

The shadow of Harney had crept out to them, and, even as they looked,

it stole on, cat-like, across the lower ridges toward the East. One

after another the rounded hills changed hue as it crossed them. For a

moment it lingered in the tangle of woods at the outermost edge, and

then without further pause glided out over the prairie. They watched it

fascinated. The sparkle was quenched in the Cheyenne; the white gleam

of the Bad Lands became a dull gray, scarce distinguishable from the

gray of the twilight. Though a single mysterious cleft a long yellow

bar pointed down across the plains, paused at the horizon, and slowly

lifted into the air. The mountain shadow followed it steadily up into

the sky, growing and growing against the dullness of the east, until at

last over against them in the heavens was the huge phantom of a

mountain, infinitely greater, infinitely grander than any mountain ever

seen by mortal eyes, and lifting higher and higher, commanded upward by

that single wand of golden light. Then suddenly the wand was withdrawn

and the ghost mountain merged into the yellow afterglow of evening.