When spring came at last and the willows drooped green and fresh over the brook and the range rang with bray of burro and whistle of stallion, old Al Auchincloss had been a month in his grave.
To Helen it seemed longer. The month had been crowded with work, events, and growing, more hopeful duties, so that it contained a world of living. The uncle had not been forgotten, but the innumerable restrictions to development and progress were no longer manifest. Beasley had not presented himself or any claim upon Helen; and she, gathering confidence day by day, began to believe all that purport of trouble had been exaggerated.
In this time she had come to love her work and all that pertained to it. The estate was large. She had no accurate knowledge of how many acres she owned, but it was more than two thousand. The fine, old, rambling ranch-house, set like a fort on the last of the foot-hills, corrals and fields and barns and meadows, and the rolling green range beyond, and innumerable sheep, horses, cattle--all these belonged to Helen, to her ever-wondering realization and ever-growing joy. Still, she was afraid to let herself go and be perfectly happy. Always there was the fear that had been too deep and strong to forget so soon.
This bright, fresh morning, in March, Helen came out upon the porch to revel a little in the warmth of sunshine and the crisp, pine-scented wind that swept down from the mountains. There was never a morning that she did not gaze mountainward, trying to see, with a folly she realized, if the snow had melted more perceptibly away on the bold white ridge. For all she could see it had not melted an inch, and she would not confess why she sighed. The desert had become green and fresh, stretching away there far below her range, growing dark and purple in the distance with vague buttes rising. The air was full of sound--notes of blackbirds and the baas of sheep, and blasts from the corrals, and the clatter of light hoofs on the court below.
Bo was riding in from the stables. Helen loved to watch her on one of those fiery little mustangs, but the sight was likewise given to rousing apprehensions. This morning Bo appeared particularly bent on frightening Helen. Down the lane Carmichael appeared, waving his arms, and Helen at once connected him with Bo's manifest desire to fly away from that particular place. Since that day, a month back, when Bo had confessed her love for Carmichael, she and Helen had not spoken of it or of the cowboy. The boy and girl were still at odds. But this did not worry Helen. Bo had changed much for the better, especially in that she devoted herself to Helen and to her work. Helen knew that all would turn out well in the end, and so she had been careful of her rather precarious position between these two young firebrands.