The Claim Jumpers

It soon became evident that the brightness of the morning was reflected

from the girl's mood. She fairly sparkled with gaiety and high spirits.

The two got along famously.

"Where are you going?" asked Bennington at last.

"On the picnic, of course," she rejoined promptly. "Weren't you

invited? I thought you were."

"I thought it would be too wet," he averred in explanation.

"Not a bit! The rain dries quickly in the hills, and the cloud-burst

only came into this gulch. I have here," she went on, twisting around

in her saddle to inspect a large bundle and a pair of well-stuffed

saddle bags, "I have here a coffee pot, a frying pan, a little kettle,

two tin cups, and various sorts of grub. I am fixed for a scout sure.

Now when we get near your camp you must run up and get an axe and some

matches."

Bennington observed with approval the corpulency of the bundle and the

skilful manner with which it was tied on. He noted, with perhaps more

approval, her lithe figure in its old-fashioned painter's blouse and

rough skirt, and the rosiness of her cheeks under a cloth cap caught on

awry. As the ponies sought a path at a snail's pace through the sharp

flints, she showed in a thousand ways how high the gaiety of her

animal spirits had mounted. She sang airy little pieces of songs. She

uttered single clear notes. She mocked, with a ludicrously feminine

croak, the hoarse voice of a crow sailing over them. She rallied

Bennington mercilessly on his corduroys, his yellow flapped pistol

holster, his laced boots. She went over in ridiculous pantomime the

scene of the mock lynching, until Bennington rolled in his saddle with

light-hearted laughter, and wondered how it was possible he had ever

taken the affair seriously. When he returned with the axe she was

hugely alarmed lest he harm himself by his awkward way of carrying it,

and gave him much wholesome advice in her most maternal manner. After

all of which she would catch his eye, and they would both laugh to

startle the birds.

Blue Lead proved to be some distance away, for which fact Bennington

was not sorry. At length they surmounted a little ridge. Over its

summit there started into being a long cool "draw," broad and shallow

near the top, but deepening by insensible degrees into a cañon filled

already with broad-leaved shrubs, and thickly grown with saplings of

beech and ash. Through the screen of slender trunks could be seen

miniature open parks carpeted with a soft tiny fern, not high enough to

conceal the ears of a rabbit, or to quench the flame of the tiger lily

that grew there. Soon a little brook sprang from nowhere, and crept

timidly through and under thick mosses. After a time it increased in

size, and when it had become large enough to bubble over clear gravel,

Mary called a halt.