prairie on either hand, the winding road that lost itself in the
distance, the pine-clad slope to the right, were all but a part of a
great ranch. Herds of cattle were doubtless pastured within that
enclosure, though nowhere visible to the holiday party riding and
driving over their domain. Hundreds of prairie-dog holes dotted the
vast field on either hand, and here and there one of the odd little
fraternity scampered like a ball of gray cotton across the field, or sat
erect beside his hole, barking shrilly, before vanishing, with a whisk
of the tail, from sight. Stephen took so kindly to the little show, and
made such commonplace exclamations of pleasure, that Amy felt a sudden
relieved compunction and smiled upon him very graciously.
"They are not a bit like what I expected," he said; "but they are such
self-important, conceited little chaps that you can't help having a
fellow-feeling with them!"
"Hullo! There's a give-away!" Jack Hersey shouted; and he turned and
repeated the remark for the benefit of a buckboard in the rear. Amy
thought Jack very stupid and silly, and in her own heart, she promptly
ranged herself on the side of her young minister. There was nothing
subtle or elusive about her changes of mood, and Stephen profited by
each relenting. For a few blissful moments, accordingly, he now basked
in the full consciousness of her favor.
They continued for half an hour on the ranch road, rising and dipping
from point to point, yet mounting always higher above the great plain
below. There the prairie stretched away, a hundred miles to the East and
South, with never a lake nor a forest to catch the light, with not a
cloud in the sky to cast a shadow. Yet over the broad, undulating
expanse were lines and patches of varying color, changing and wavering
from moment to moment, like mystic currents and eddies upon a heaving,
tide-swept sea. Amy watched her companion furtively, ready to take
umbrage at any lack of proper appreciation on his part; for this was
what she liked best in all Colorado, this vast, mysterious prairie sea.
Yet when she saw by Stephen's face that the spell had touched him too,
when she noted the rapt gaze he sent forth, as he left his horse to
choose his own way, she felt annoyed, unreasoningly, perversely annoyed.
Somehow his look was too rapt, he was taking it too solemnly, he was too
much in earnest! She had a longing to touch up her horse and gallop off
to some spot where she might be unmolested, where she might think her
own thoughts and receive her own impressions without seeing them
accentuated, exaggerated in another person. There had never been any one
before who seemed to feel just as she did about that view, and somehow
she resented this intrusion upon what seemed like her own preserve.
Of course there was but one explanation of all this high-strung
sensitiveness in a healthy, natural girl like Amy Lovejoy. She had made
a mistake, and she was finding it out. In those autumn days in the
little New England town, she had fallen captive to an idea, a theory of
life, a certain poetical incentive and aspiration; for months she had
fed her imagination upon this new experience, and suddenly Stephen Burns
had come, and by his personal presence asserted a personal claim. She
had been unconsciously ignoring the personal element in their relation,
which had, in the months of separation, become very indefinite and
unreal to her. She had told her father that Stephen's eyes were brown,
and she found that they were blue; she had described him as being tall,
and he had turned out to be rather below the medium height; she had
forgotten what his voice was like, and it seemed oppressively rich and
full.
"Better look out for your horse, Mr. Burns!" she said curtly. "He almost
took a header a minute ago."
"Did he?" said Stephen. "I did not notice. This is the view you told me
about, is it not?"
"Very likely," she returned, with affected indifference. "We Colorado
people always do a good deal of bragging when we are in the East. We
wear all our little descriptions and enthusiasms threadbare."
"There was nothing threadbare about your account," Stephen protested.
"It was almost as vivid as the sight itself."
"We take things more naturally when we get back to them. Come, Jack,
let's go faster!"
There was a level stretch of road before them, and the two young people
were off with a rush. Stephen knew that the livery horse he rode could
never keep up with them, even had his pride allowed him to follow
uninvited. He had a dazed, hurt feeling, which was not more than half
dispelled when, a few minutes later he came up with the truants, resting
their horses at the top of a sudden dip in the road.
"Who got there first?" called a voice from one of the buckboards.
"Amy, of course. You don't suppose Cigarette would pass a lady!"
"Jacky wouldn't 'cause he couldn't!" Amy quoted. "Poor Cigarette," she
added, descending to prose again, and tapping Cigarette's nose with the
butt of her riding-crop. "How he did heave and pant when he caught up
with us! And Sunbeam never turned a hair!"
"What made you call him Sunbeam?" Stephen asked, with an effort to
appear undisturbed, as he watched her stroking the glossy black neck.
"Because he wasn't yellow," she answered shortly; upon which somebody
laughed.
They picknicked in a sunny opening among the scrub-oaks, on the edge of
a hollow through which a mountain brook had made its way. There was snow
in the hollow, and a thin coating of ice on the brook. A few rods away,
the horses, relieved of their bridles, were enjoying their dinners,
switching their sides with their tails from time to time, as if the warm
sun had wakened recollections of summer flies. Amy sat on the outskirts
of the company, where Sunbeam could eat from her hand; a privilege he
was accustomed to on such occasions. One of the men had brought a
camera, and he took a snap-shot at the entire company, just as they had
grouped themselves on the sunny slope. Amy and Sunbeam were conspicuous
in the group, but when, some days later, the plate was developed, it was
found that Mr. Stephen Burns did not appear in the photograph. Amy was
the only one not surprised at the omission. He had been sitting beside
her, and she was aware that he leaned on his elbow and got out of sight,
just as the snap-shot was taken. She wondered at the time why he did so,
but she found that she did not greatly care to know the reason.
A few minutes later, just as the girls of the party were busy dipping
the cups and spoons into the edge of the snow,--the sun so hot on their
shoulders that they quite longed to get into the shade, Elliot
Chittenden came hurrying back from a short excursion out to the edge of
the slope, to tell them of a wicked-looking cloud in the north. The brow
of the hill had shut off the view in that direction, the faithful
barometer, the Peak, having long since been lost sight of.
There was a sudden hurry and commotion, for all knew the menace of a
storm from the north, and that its coming is often as swift as it is
sharp. No one was better aware of the situation than Amy.
"Put your overcoat on to begin with," she said to Burns; "and get your
horse. I'll see to Sunbeam." The bridle was already fast on the pretty
black head as she spoke, but it was some time before Burns came up. He
had mislaid his bridle, and when he found it he fumbled unaccountably.
His fingers apparently shared the agitation of his mind; an agitation
which was something new in his experience, and which made him feel
singularly at odds with everything, even with impersonal straps and
buckles! When at last he came, she put her foot in his hand and went up
like a bird to a perch.
"Everybody has got ahead of us," she said, as they put their horses into
a canter.
The sun was still hot upon them, but down below, the plains were
obscured as with a fog.
"What is that?" he asked.
"A dust-storm. Can you make your horse go faster?"
"Not and keep the wind in him."
"Never mind, we shall do very well."
They had come about the brow of the mountain now, and could see the
great black cloud to the north. It looked pretty ugly, even to Stephen
Burns's unaccustomed eyes.
"What do you expect?" he asked, as they walked their horses down a sharp
descent.
"It may be only wind, but there is likely to be snow at this season. If
we can only get out of the ranch we're all right; the prairie-dog holes
make it bad when you can't see."
"Can't see?" he repeated.
"Yes," she answered impatiently. "Of course you can't see _in a
blizzard_!"
A moment later a blinding cloud of sand struck them with such force that
both the horses slewed sharp about and stood an instant, trembling with
the shock. As they turned to the north again, a few flakes of snow came
flying almost horizontally in their faces and then--the storm came!
Horses and riders bent their heads to the blast, and on they went. It
had suddenly grown bitterly cold.
"I wish you would take my coat," said Stephen, fumbling at the buttons
as he had fumbled at the bridle. His teeth were chattering as he spoke.
"Nonsense!" Amy answered sharply. "You'll feel this ten times as much as
I."
The snow was collecting in Stephen's beard, freezing as it fell, and
making fantastic shapes there; the top of Amy's hat was a white cone,
stiff and sharp as if it were carved in stone.
They could not see a rod before them, but they found it easier to
breathe now.
"Isn't it splendid, the way one rouses to it!" Amy exclaimed. "I'm
getting all heated up from the effort of breathing!"
There was no answer.
"Don't you like it?" she asked, taking a look at his set face.
"Like it? With you out in it!"
That was all he said, but Amy felt her cheeks tingle under the dash of
snow that clung to them. The answer came like a rude check to the
exultant thrill which had prompted her words.
"He doesn't understand in the least!" she thought, impatiently, and it
was all she could do to refrain from spurring on her horse and leaving
him in the lurch as she had done once before, that day. He was
faint-hearted, pusillanimous! What if it were only for her sake that he
feared? All the worse for him! She did not want his solicitude; it was
an offence to her!
The wind whistled past them, and the snow beat in their faces; the
shapes in his beard grew more and more fantastic, the white cone on her
hat grew taller, and then broke and tumbled into her lap; the horses
bent their heads, all caked with snow, and cantered pluckily on.
They had passed the gate of the ranch, leaving it open behind them, and
now there were but a couple of miles between them and the town. The
snow was so blinding that they did not see a group of buckboards and
saddle-horses under a shed close at hand, nor guess that some of the
party had found shelter in a house near by. They rode swiftly on,
gaining in speed as they approached the town. The horses were very close
together, straining, side by side, toward the goal. Amy's right hand lay
upon her knee, the stiff fingers closed about the riding-crop. If she
had thought about it at all, she would have said that her hand was
absolutely numb. Suddenly, with a shock, she felt another hand close
upon it, while the words, "_my darling!_" vibrated upon her ear; the
voice was so close that it seemed to touch her cheek. She started as if
she had been stung.
"Oh, my riding-crop!" she cried, letting the handle slip from her grasp.
"I beg your pardon," Stephen gasped, in a low, pained tone. "If you will
wait an instant, I will get it for you!"
He turned his horse about, for they had passed the spot by several
lengths.
Sunbeam stood for a moment, obedient to his rider's hand, while Amy
watched the storm close in about her departing cavalier. As he vanished
from view, a sudden, overpowering impulse of flight seized her. Without
daring to think of what she was doing, she bent down and whispered
"_go!_" in the low sharp tone that Sunbeam knew. He was off like a shot.
"I don't care, I don't care," the girl said to herself, over and over
again, as they bounded forward in the teeth of the storm. "Better now
than later!"
She wondered whether Stephen would kill his horse endeavoring to
overtake her; she wondered whether he would ever overtake her again!
Somehow it seemed to her as if the storm had caught her up bodily and
were bearing her away from a very perplexing world. After all, what an
amenable, unexacting sort of thing a blizzard was! How very easy to deal
with! You had only to duck your head, and screw up your eyes, and cleave
your way through it, and on it went, quite unconcerned with your moods
and tenses! If Stephen Burns were only more like that, she thought to
herself! But, alas! poor Stephen, with all his strong claims to
affection and esteem, could not assert the remotest kinship with the
whistling winds and blinding snow which were proving such formidable
rivals!
A narrow lane appeared at her right. Almost before she was aware that it
was there, she had swung Sunbeam about; in another moment they were
standing, with two other saddle-horses, in a little grove of trees,
further protected by a small house close at hand. It seemed almost warm
in that sheltered nook. Amy recognized the horses and knew that Harry de
Luce and one of the girls must have taken refuge within.
The lane was a short one, and she and Sunbeam stood, trembling with
excitement, until they saw the shadow of a horse and rider speeding
along the road toward the town. Then Amy drew a long breath of relief.
"It was all nothing but a shadow," she said to herself, "and I went and
thought it was real!"
She slid stiffly down from the saddle and hobbled into the house, all
the exultation gone from her bounding veins. It made her a bit dizzy to
think of the rush of tumultuous emotions which had outvied the storm of
the elements but now. By the time the friendly hostess had established
her before the kitchen stove and taken away her dripping hat and coat,
she felt too limp and spent to answer the eager questions that were
asked.
"Do something for Sunbeam," she murmured weakly to Harry de Luce, in
answer to his ready offers of help.
"They're going to send out a 'bus with four horses to pick up the
remnants," de Luce assured her. "If you girls will go in the 'bus I will
lead Sunbeam and Paddy home." And somehow it seemed so pleasant to be
taken care of, just in a group with another girl and two horses, that
Amy, with a faint, assenting smile, submitted to be classed with the
"remnants."
She felt as if she were half asleep when, an hour or more later, she sat
in the corner of the great omnibus, that went lurching along through the
snow, like a mudscow gone astray among ocean waves. She had an idea that
everybody was talking at once, but that was just as well, since not a
syllable was audible above the creaking and rattling of the big ark.
Arrived at home she found the riding-crop, but no Stephen. He had called
an hour ago, to ask if she had arrived safely, but he had said nothing
about coming again.
"If he has an atom of spirit he will never come near me again," Amy
thought to herself. And then; "Oh, that dear blizzard!" she exclaimed
under her breath.
Sunbeam, she learned, had arrived before her. Thomas Jefferson, the
black stable-man, reported him as partaking of a sumptuous supper with
unimpaired relish. The thought of her favorite, crunching his feed in
the stall close at hand, gave her a sense of companionship as she ate
her own solitary meal. Her father had been called in consultation to a
neighboring town and would not return until the following day.
After supper Amy curled herself up in an easy-chair under the
drop-light, and opened a new novel which she had been longing to read,
ever since Stephen Burns's arrival. She thought with strong disapproval
of the manner in which he had been taking possession of her time for two
weeks past. She looked at the clock; it was half-past-eight.
"Well! that's over with!" she thought, with a half guilty pang of
conviction.
Somehow the novel was not as absorbing as she had anticipated. She let
it drop on her lap, and sat for awhile listening to the storm outside,
as she reviewed this strange, unnatural episode of half-betrothal which
had turned out so queerly.
A sharp ring at the telephone in the adjoining room broke in upon her
revery. She hastened to answer it. It was an inquiry from the
livery-stable for Mr. Stephen Burns. He had not brought the horse back,
nor had he returned to his hotel. Did Miss Lovejoy perhaps know of his
whereabouts? Did she think they had better send out a search-party?
Miss Lovejoy knew nothing of his whereabouts, and she was strongly of
the opinion that he had better be looked up. As she still stood
listening at the telephone, her heart knocking her ribs in a fierce
fright, she heard a voice in the distant stable, not intended for her
ears, say: "Not much use to search! If he ain't under cover he ain't
alive." Upon which the heart ceased, for several seconds, its knocking
at the ribs, and Amy Lovejoy knew how novel-heroines feel, when they are
described as growing gray about the lips.
She could not seem to make the telephone tube fit in its ring, and after
trying to do so once or twice, she left it hanging by the cord, and went
and opened the front door and stood on the veranda. It did not seem to
her especially cold, but over there, in the light that streamed from the
parlor window, the snow lay drifted into a singular shape, that looked
as if it might cover a human form. She shuddered sharply and went into
the house again. From time to time she telephoned to the stable. They
had sent a close carriage out with a doctor and two other passengers,
and Elliot Chittenden had gone in an open buckboard with a driver. By
and by the buckboard had come back and another party had gone out in it.
Then the carriage had returned and gone forth again with fresh horses
and a fresh driver.
She played a good deal with the riding-crop during the evening, and now
and then she went outside the door and took a look at the weird,
shroud-like shape, there in the light of the window. Once she stepped up
to it and pushed the riding-crop in, to its full length, just to make
sure that there was nothing under the snow. After that she took the
riding-crop in and dried it carefully on a towel.
Before she knew it the evening was far gone, and all but one carriage
had returned.
"Guess Jim's turned in at some ranch," came the word from the
livery-stable. "He'll be ready to start out again as soon as it's
light."
If the evening had not seemed so miraculously short, Amy could not have
forgiven herself for having been so slow in arriving at her own plan of
action. As it was, the clock had struck twelve, before she found
herself, clothed in two or three knit and wadded jackets under a loose
old seal-skin sack, crossing the yard to the stable door. The maids had
long since gone to bed, and Thomas Jefferson was a mile away, under his
own modest roof.
Presently, with a clatter of hoofs, Sunbeam came forth from the stable
door, bearing on his back, a funny, round, dumpy figure, very unlike in
its outlines to the slender form which usually graced that seat. The
gallant steed was still further encumbered by a fur-lined great coat of
the doctor's, strapped on behind, its pockets well stocked with brandy
flask and biscuits.
The storm had much abated, and there was already a break in the clouds
over yonder. The air was intensely cold, but the wind had quite died
down. Sunbeam took the road at a good pace, for he had a valiant spirit
and would have scorned to remember the day's fatigues. His rider sat, a
funny little ball of fur, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Stephen was nowhere on the open road; that was sure, for he was far too
good a horseman to come to grief out there. There was but one place to
look for him, and that was among the prairie-dog holes. She had told him
of the danger there was among them, and he would have hastened there the
moment he believed that she was lost.
Amy did not do very much thinking as she rode along; she did not analyze
the feeling that drove her forth to the rescue. She only knew that she
and she alone was responsible for any harm that might have come to one
whose only fault was that he had taken her at her word; and that she
would cheerfully break her own neck and Sunbeam's,--even Sunbeam's! for
the sake of rescuing him.
The storm had ceased entirely now, and just as she reached the ranch
gate, which had swung half to on its hinges and was stuck there in the
snow, the moon came out and revealed the wide white expanse, unbroken by
any sign of the road. She felt sure that the search-parties would have
followed the road as closely as possible and that they would have tried
not to stray off into the field. But that was just where Stephen Burns,
mindful of the perils she had described to him, would naturally have
turned. She blew the whistle in the end of her riding-crop, once, twice,
three times. The sound died away in the wide echoless spaces. Then
cautiously, slowly, she made Sunbeam feel his way across the snow. The
moon was still riding among heavy clouds, but now and then it shone
forth and flooded with light the broad white field, casting a sharp-cut,
distorted shadow of horse and rider upon the snow.
[Illustration: "THE RANCH GATE, WHICH HAD SWUNG HALF TO ON ITS
HINGES."]
Once or twice she stopped, and blew the whistle and hallooed, and each
time the weird silence closed in again like an impenetrable veil.
Sometimes she became impatient of her slow progress, but she knew too
well the dangers of a misstep to risk the chance of success by any lack
of caution. Even in her anxiety and distress of mind, she marked the
intelligence with which Sunbeam picked his way, testing the firmness of
each spot on which he trod, as if he had known the danger.
Presently they began the ascent of a long narrow ridge beyond which she
knew there were no holes. As they paused for a moment on the crest,
looking down into the moonlit hollow, she raised the riding-crop to her
lips, and blew a long, shrill whistle; and promptly as an echo a voice
returned the signal. Following the direction of the sound, her eyes
discerned a dark shadow in the hollow forty rods away. She put Sunbeam
into a canter, and as she approached the shadow, the outline defined
itself, and she saw that it was a ruinous shed or hut.
"Hulloo!" came the voice again, and this time it was unmistakeably
Stephen's.
A hundred yards from the shed, Sunbeam shied violently. Looking to one
side, she beheld in the shadow of a mass of scrub-oaks the body of a
horse lying stark and still. Close beside the head was a dark spot in
the snow.
A moment later she had dismounted and was standing within the rickety
hut, looking down upon another shadowy form that moved and spoke.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
"Not much. I believe I have sprained my ankle. But the poor nag is done
for," he added sorrowfully.
"Which foot have you hurt?"
"The right one."
"That's good. Then you can ride sidesaddle. Are you sure that is all?"
He was already consuming brandy and biscuit at a rate to dissipate all
immediate anxiety.
"Yes; and I declare it's worth it!" he cried with enthusiasm; a
statement which, if slightly ambiguous, conveyed a cheerful impression.
"Did the fall kill the horse?" Amy asked, with a little quiver in her
voice, of pity for the poor beast.
"No; I thought it best to cut an artery for him. Poor boy! He floundered
terribly before he went down."
"What threw him?"
"Something in the way of a branch or a piece of timber. Lucky it
happened where it did," he added. "I couldn't have gone far looking for
shelter."
"Poor old nag!" said Amy. Then, perceiving that she had not been
altogether polite: "Aren't you nearly frozen?" she asked.
"No, it's very snug in here. Some other tramp must have been here before
me, and got these leaves together. There's lots of warmth in them."
By this time Stephen had crawled out from among the oak-leaves and,
having got himself into the doctor's fur-lined coat, stood on one foot,
leaning heavily against the door-frame.
"A splendid night, isn't it?" he remarked in a conversational tone.