Breaking the Blue Roan

by Honoré Willsie

Breaking the Blue Roan

 

A Short-Story Gem in a Western Setting—The Search of a Man for Beauty and How and Where He Found It

 

By Honoré Willsie
Author of "Desert Justice" "Find the Maverick," etc.

JOHN HARDY was born in Montana. But he did not grow up to be a sheep-man, after all, because when John was a baby his father homesteaded in Wyoming. The homestead prospered, and when Bill Hardy died he left John five thousand head of Herefords and a hundred or so of range-horses. John was twenty-five when he inherited. At thirty-five, he still was unmarried, a man of magnificent physique, best known for his taciturnity, his slowness and his superb horsemanship.

In spite his many acres and his herds, John was not popular with the women of Lost Trail. Some of them said he was too lazy to make love. Some of them said that a man who was soft with horses, like John, never made a successful lover; others that John was too stupid to find a wife. All of which merely goes to prove that Lost Trail women were poor judges of men.

Quite unknown to me rest of the valley, John was in love; deeply, passionately in love, and had been ever since the new schoolma'am had come to the log schoolhouse on the mountainside. Not that Edith Archer, the schoolma'am, guessed this fact. She would probably have said that one of the Lost Trail girls bred to the saddle and to the bitter hard work of the ranch would be John's choice. At least, she would have said this the first few months of her stay in Lost Trail. What she really said later is a part of this story.

Edith Archer was slender and gray-eyed, with masses of chestnut hair wrapped round a finely shaped head. Her eyes and mouth were very beautiful, the eyes large, deep-set and grave, the mouth richly curved and wistful. She was low-voiced, an anomaly in Lost Trail where women spoke shrilly and men spoke softly. She arrived at Lost Trail in September. By May, the seven thousand feet of elevation at which the valley was set ceased to make her pant at the slightest exertion. She could stick on a well-broken horse, and she had tooled the Lost Trail school along at a pace unprecedented in the annals of that happy-go-lucky assemblage.

By May, most of the eligible young riders of Lost Trail had offered themselves to Edith and had been refused. All but John Hardy and Dick Holton. Neither of these had proposed to the schoolma'am; John, because he did not want to add the pain of a refusal to his general sense of unfitness; Dick, because, for all that he was in love with Edith, he had plans afoot that did not harmonize with marriage. Edith herself looked on marriage as bondage which she had not the slightest desire to enter.

As John was loping past the schoolhouse, late one May afternoon, Edith hailed him.

"Oh, Mr. Hardy! Would you mind calling for my mail, too?"

John waved, his hat and put his spurs to Nelly, who broke into a gallop and arrived at the post-office in a sweating lather. A group of riders around the empty stove greeted him noisily. He grinned without losing the quiet dimity habitual to his blue eyes, and said to the postmaster,

"Give me Miss Archer's mail, too, Pete."

"How'd you get on that job, John?" demanded Pink Marshall. "I thought Dick, here, was on duty. Did you get yours, Dick? Say; I've done formed an ex-Archer club. Come on in, Dick, and Johnny, you'd better qualify!"

Dick, a good-looking man, dark and a little heavy around the jaw, laughed with the rest. "I ain't eligible yet, Pink. You go on with the mail, John. Maybe she likes elephants!"

"I don't know but what you'd better let me take her her letters, Pete," Pink went on. "A guy like John that's too lazy to court Edith Archer ain't got any love in him. And I still like to look at her, even if she don't want me."

"As for me," grunted Art Brown, "I like to listen to her. She's the only woman in the valley that don't bleat every time she opens her mouth."

One of the older men, Hank Lawson, spoke. "I'm going to make a try at breaking the blue roan mare to-morrow. Better come up, John."

"Handsomest horse in the valley! I wish you'd sell her to me, Hank," said John.

Hank shook his head. "Anybody in Lost Trail that hasn't offered to buy the blue roan from you, Lawson?" asked Pete.

"Everybody's on record but Dick," replied the rancher.

Pete laughed. "Well, some folks has a prejudice against paying money for horse-flesh."

There was an awkward pause. Dick had had some narrow escapes from the sheriff, but few people had the temerity to taunt him about it.

Pink came to the rescue. "You'd ought to form an ex-blue-roan club, Hank!"

John laughed, lifted Pink by the collar and the slack of his breeches and laid him across the empty stove, then went out.

 

EDITH was sitting on the log door-step of the schoolhouse when John brought Nelly to her haunches before her.

Edith laughed. "Were you ever allowed to gallop alone on the enemy when you were in France, Mr. Hardy?"

"I was put into the infantry," replied John, with a smile.

"They didn't want you to scare the Germans to death, of course."

John's bigness was of bone and sinew. He jumped from the saddle without touching the stirrups, pulled his hat and handed Edith her mail. She looked up at him, still smiling.

"Little Charley Banes is watering my horse for me. Will you rest a bit, or must you go on?"

John pulled the reins over Nelly's head and sat down on the log beside the schoolma'am, who did not open her letters but sat waiting for the big rider to speak. Her eyes swept the powerful lines beneath the chaps and the soft silk shirt, then paused on the stern modeling of the mouth and chin.

Still John did not speak. his eyes lifted from the green-budding alfalfa in the valley to the menacing black saw edge of the Dead Fire range.

"Well," said Edith at last, "I hate to leave it all."

"When do you go?" asked the rider.

"I thought I'd wait for the Fourth of July rodeo," she said. "Shall you ride?"

John nodded.

"Mr. Lawson said he was going to ask you to come up to help him with the blue roan to-morrow." Edith looked at John inquiringly.

"Yes; I'll be up there, I guess."

"It must be a wonderful thing to have the skill with horses that you have," sighed the schoolma'am.

"You wouldn't think so if you'd been brought up in Lost Trail, and if you'd been brought up in Lost Trail, you'd have been spoiled."

"Spoiled! My word, man, what was there to spoil? If I'd been bred in this valley, I might have been wild and full of fight like the blue roan, but I'd have been really worth while. As it is, I'm just a soft Easterner."

"The blue roan wasn't bred in this valley. She's a wild horse Hank roped up in the Many Eagles a while back. And I can't see how any one would want to be bred in this rough, God-forsaken spot."

"Don't you like it?"

"Of course! But I'm rough and God-forsaken like the country. Nobody like you could put up with it very long."

The schoolma'am stared at the rancher curiously.

"Sometimes," John went on in his low-voiced drawl, "I get tired of it."

"What could you desire more than you have?" asked the schoolma'am.

"Well, even a rider likes something that's beautiful and fine in his life once in a while. The older I grow the more I realize that the folks that marry just on cattle and—and like cattle—don't know anything at all about what there might be in love. There might be something that these Lost Trail folks don't realize exists, you know."

If Edith felt surprise, she did not show it. For long months she had tried to tempt John Hardy to share with her what thoughts lay behind the rugged dignity of his quiet face, and she was not going to stop the unexpected confidence by any show of amazement.

She nodded her head. "There should be the same beauty in love here that there is in the ranges yonder, just as subtle and just as enduring. But one would never expect to find it here—or anywhere else——"

John drew a deep breath. But before he could speak, small Charley appeared with a little bay horse.

"Shall I help you on?" asked John.

"If you don't mind," replied Edith.

But John did not offer his knee. Instead, he stepped up on the log, put his great hands around Edith's waist and swung her to the saddle as if she were a child.

"Shucks!" cried Charley. "You don't have to do that. She can get on as well as anybody."

"That will do, Charles!" said Edith. "You may go now. We'll see you at the ranch to-morrow, then, Mr. Hardy?"

"Yes; I'll be along." John mounted and turned Nelly's head up the mountain. At the turn of the trail he looked back. Edith was still before the schoolhouse door. She waved her hand and John waved back, then rode on with an expression of profound depression on his sunburned face.

Edith boarded with the Lawsons at the north end of the valley. Their ranch of a thousand acres straddled Lost Trail Creek, which tumbled like a liquid green opal past the corrals and down the alfalfa fields. The Lawsons' little log cabin was set in a grove of quivering aspens within easy access of the creek. There was no fence about the house, and cattle, horses, dogs, cats and chickens inhabited the very door-step amid a litter of saddles, harness, spurs, lariat ropes and nose-bags.

 

WHEN John Hardy rode the next morning about eleven o'clock, two or three riders were sitting on the fence. Mrs. Lawson was established on the hay wagon and Edith was perched on the top bar of the corral gate, hugging the post. Hank Lawson was standing in the corral holding a blue-roan mare by a lariat round her neck. John dismounted and tied Nelly to the hay-rack.

"You're just in time, John!" cried Mame Lawson. "She's thrown the hull of 'em. She just dumped Dick and they had to rope her to keep her from climbing the fence."

John lighted a cigaret and threw his long legs over the fence beside the other riders.

"She's sure a bird!" panted Lawson. "But ain't she a beauty? Got some Hambletonian in her, and some Morgan, by her head."

"Gord, Hank, you'll be claiming Clydesdale for her yet, just because her mane's curly!" grunted Pink Lawson. "She's just the orneriest unbroke mare in Lost Trail, half Injun pony and the other half wild-cat."

John, hunched on the topmost rail, looked from the panting horse to Edith and from Edith to the great white crest of Eagle's Peak which brooded with appalling intimacy over the Lawson ranch, then back to the mare. She was about fifteen hands high, a spotless blue roan in color, with the magnificent mane and tail that the open winter range produces. She had the round strong back and barrel so desirable in the mountains, small feet and the lean, wiry neck that spelled ancestry, real, if remote. She was panting, and her breast was foam-becked.

"Hard to mount?" asked John.

"Easy as a bolt of lightning," said Pink. "Look at the she hellion with her tail and neck as limp as a rag doll! Wouldn't you think she was stuffed with sawdust? Go to it, John! I hold the record to date. I stayed with her just six minutes. Hank's going to enter her down at Cheyenne, Frontier day, as the Great Unbroke. I'd like to see one of those champeens tackle her."

John pulled off his coat and vest and dropped them across the fence. He drew his broad rider's belt tighter and adjusted his spurs, then put on his gloves again.

"Who saddled her?" he asked.

"All of us," replied Hank promptly.

"Everything's O. K.—new cinch and hackamore. But I warn you, she's got the makings of a killer in her."

Edith cleared her throat. "What's the idea of breaking her, poor thing? I've a queer sort of sympathy for her. You have a hundred horses, Mr. Lawson."

Lawson looked from Edith's puzzled eyes to the row of grinning riders.

"Well, she's got to be broke, ain't she?"

"I don't see why. You've lots of horses you never break."

"Yes; but she's a beauty and she's got to be broke. Come on, John!"

John put his hand on the reins. The roan jerked her head high in the air. Lawson now shortened the lariat till he reached the animal's head, then, with the mare backing and plunging violently, he loosened the noose and slipped the rope.

"You get on the fence, Hank," ordered John, "and don't make any more noise than you naturally feel you have to."

 

JOHN had no quirt. With one hand gripping the reins firmly, he lighted another cigaret. As the match flared, the horse tried to rear and the man jumped aside to avoid her fore hoofs. Then he began to talk to her, now and again making a move as if to put his left hand, which held the reins, on the pommel. At each attempt, the mare lunged violently backward.

"So, beauty; so! Why worry? Life is always like this. Better be broke by a man than by a mountain-lion on the range. So! That's no way to act! So!"

Edith, sitting on the gate, tried not to miss a word of the monologue.

"Wait, beauty; wait! You don't know what you've been missing. The best fun in life for horse or man is the saddle. Calmly now! Nobody is going to hit you over the head while I'm around."

Ten minutes of this, and then Dick cried profanely: "Get onto the blankety-blank, John! What are you afraid of?"

Suddenly, and without touching the stirrups, John was in the saddle. The mare dropped her head. John established his feet quickly in the stirrups. She drew her legs together under her belly; her tail flattened between her hind legs and her ears lay back on her neck. She quivered, and the great muscles of her shoulders knotted. Then, with a wild squeal, she bucked, and the battle was on.

She bucked all the way around the fence, coming down each time with a crash of her right side into the rails in the vain attempt to crush Hardy's leg. She split his boot-leg, but if she hurt his leg, John gave no sign. When she had bucked so long that the spectators had lost track of the number of times she had circled the corral, she ceased her squealing and shot across the enclosure, straight for the gate.

"Get away, Miss Archer!" cried John.

The girl dropped without the gate just as the mare reared, jumped into the air and came down on her side. John was standing beside her as she lay for a moment, kicking, and as she rose, he was in the saddle. With unmitigated enthusiasm, the mare tore across the corral, again reared and again came down on her side. Edith clambered up beside Pink Marshall.

"Will she kill him?" she asked.

"Shucks! Nobody hardly ever gets killed by horses out in this country," he answered. "You've got to hand it to old John! Sixteen minutes, and she ain't budged him."

Edith drew a deep breath. Her eyes swept the glowing beauty of the ranges, then dropped back to the blue roan and the rider whose soft silk shirt was wet with sweat. Again and again the mare, her eyes mad with fear and anger, jumped for the sun and fell back to her side.

"Twenty-five minutes!" cried Lawson.

As if she suddenly realized that she ought to be weary, the mare paused in the middle of the corral, head drooped, legs straddled. John warily lighted a fresh cigaret, but the tense muscles under his wet shirt did not relax nor did his spurs drop from the bloody flanks. His hat long since had rolled under the fence and his damp yellow hair gleamed in the brilliant sunlight. No one spoke. For a full five minutes the roan stood quiescent; then, agile as a cat, she lay down and rolled. She enjoyed this pastime for several moments, evidently under the impression that she was crushing John into the muck of the corral. But when she regained her feet he was in the saddle, and once more she resumed the bucking. John's face now was drawn and white under the dripping sweat. Again and again the blue roan threw herself against the fence.

"Fifty-two minutes, and he ain't pulled leather yet," grunted Lawson. "But he might as well quit. I'll send her down to Cheyenne."

"Don't engage space quite yet!" exclaimed Pink. "Watch this!"

The panting horse again was standing in the middle of the corral. John lifted the reins high above her neck and drove the rowels home. The blue roan broke into a gentle trot and slowly circled the corral until John brought her to pause and carefully and painfully dismounted.

"He sure grips 'em!" exclaimed Lawson.

"You'll note that she's spur- and not quirt-broke," added Pink.

"I ain't seen nothing better, not even on Frontier day," cried Mame Lawson, "except when Annie Rice, the cow-girl, got killed!"

John walked over to the fence and looked up at Edith. She smiled a little unevenly.

"I'm glad you won," she said, "but I'm sorry for the blue roan."

John nodded. "I didn't hurt her. Not near as much as she hurt me. Maybe she'll live to thank me"—this with a smile that haunted Edith for many hours.

The other riders gathered about the hay-rack where Mrs. Lawson was dispensing coffee.

"I'd like to ride the blue roan," said Edith.

"You let her alone," John returned slowly, "till she's well broke. And I don't think Lawson can lady-break her. Maybe he'll let me do it for him."

"Riding makes me sleep," sud Edith. "For a year before I came to Lost Trail, I hadn't had a real night's sleep."

"What was the trouble?"

"Too much teaching and other things."

"A man?" asked John slowly.

Edith smiled. "I've liked many men, but I certainly never would admit that one of them had given me insomnia. And I don't think I'd walk in my sleep or dream queer dreams if I had the skill and courage to fight with her every day."

"You let her alone!" repeated John. "Even if you have liked many men, that doesn't teach you to control a wild horse."

Again Edith gave him a quick, inscrutable little smile.

"Come and get some coffee."

John returned the smile and followed her to the hay-rack.

"Well, Johnny," said Hank, "what are you going to charge me for breaking the beauty?"

"You mean you want me to take her home and get her in saddle-shape?"

"I sure don't! She's good enough for me to start with right now."

"You let me take her home and I'll lady-break her for you for nothing," said John.

"Who's that for, Hank or the schoolma'am?" demanded Dick.

"Both," replied John coolly.

"Don't you do it, Hank," said Dick. "It would be a shame to have a mare like that lady-broke. And don't you think that John's taken the freedom out of her."

The others turned to follow Dick's gaze. The blue roan was standing on the far side of the corral, her head resting on the top bar of the gate. There was something dejected in the droop of the beautiful blue-brown body, something unquenchably spirited in the lift of the head toward the eternal hills. Edith looked from the blue roan to John and from John to Dick.

"I got a good horse that's lady-broke that I'd admire to give you, Miss Archer," said Dick suddenly.

"No, thanks!" exclaimed Edith laughingly. "The blue roan or nothing!"

"Aw; she'll be running away the first chance she gets!" retorted Dick. "Me, I hope she does!" And he strode over to his dapple-gray and trotted off.

 

THERE was a glorious moon that night. John could not sleep. All the long hours till midnight he lay tossing and thinking of Edith and wondering who the man might be who had given her insomnia for a year. After midnight he gave up the struggle, dressed and went out to the corral, where he talked to the horses and watched the dim outline of Eagle Mountain, which guarded the Lawson ranch. He wondered if Edith were sleeping or awake with all the watchers of the moon that sent weird calls into the whiteness of the night—coyote, dog, owl and wildcat. They seemed indescribably melancholy to John, and he was glad when, with the coming of the dawn, the far calls ceased. He went to bed and to sleep.

[Illustration: In one of these intervals, John heard the dull, thudding tramp of an unshod hoof. Before he could start his small cavalcade onward to meet the sound, a figure in a blue robe stumbled into view. It was Edith, and she was leading the blue roan.]

At noon, old Aunt Farmer, who kept house for John, woke him. "They want you to come and help hunt for the schoolma'am," she said.

John jerked on his trousers and strode into the dooryard. Pink Marshall and Art Brown were waiting for him.

"Hank sent word for us to come up," said Art. "Schoolma'am seems to have walked off somewhere last night."

Before he had finished speaking, John was throwing the saddle on Nelly.

"When did they miss her?" he asked, as they trotted out of the yard."

"Not an hour ago. Hank 'phoned to me then," replied Pink. "Said they always let her lie late on Sundays, she was such a poor sleeper. Mame tries to keep the house quiet. But when they went to call her for dinner, she wasn't there. At first they just thought she'd slipped out fur a stroll without their noticing. Then Mame see she hadn't dressed—just gone out in her nightgown and slippers."

"Her nerves must be in awful shape," volunteered Art. "How do you suppose Easterners get that way? Now, whoever heard of a woman in Lost Trail having insomnia!"

"She'd better settle down here," said Pink. "She takes to this life fine."

"Shall we stop by for Dick?" asked John.

"He went to Cheyenne last night," replied Pink.

No one spoke again until they drew rein at the Lawsons' door. Mame greeted them.

"Hank's following the creek up. He said to tell you folks to scatter."

"Has he tried to put Shep on her scent," asked John.

"Oh, yes; but you know Shep. He couldn't follow a skunk."

"Are you sure she went away in her sleep?" asked John.

"You just come in here, John," demanded Mame. "Art, you go get Shep. Maybe you'll have better luck. Hank's so sort of harsh with dumb brutes."

"I'm better at it than Art," declared Pink, dismounting to collar the trembling collie.

John followed Mame to the door of Edith's room. It was tiny, with plain rough log walls, but exquisitely clean. The bed was rumpled. The riding suit that Edith had worn the day before lay folded over the back of the chair. A little white pile of underwear was tossed across the chair-seat. John stood with his sombrero in his hand, his quiet lips pressed in a thin line. Mame pulled aside the curtain which made a closet of one corner of the room.

"I know all her clothes and there ain't a thing gone but her bath-robe and slippers. Besides, she told me that, ever since she was a child, whenever anything disturbed her in the daytime she was apt to walk in her sleep at night."

"What disturbed her yesterday?"

"How do I know? She never tells me what is really going on in her mind. But she's the nicest girl I ever saw, and I love her like she was my own kin."

John turned abruptly. "She must be right near. It's too rough a country for her to have gone far, dressed as she is."

"Why ain't she back then?" demanded Mame. "And there is another queer thing: The blue roan got away last night."

John made no comment. He already was mounting Nelly.

 

ALL day long they scoured the country in circles of ever-widening circumference. After sundown, before the moon rose, John returned to his house for a fresh horse and the equipment for living on the trail for a day or two. His arrangements made, he threw himself down to wait for the moonlight. And it seemed to him that he fell into a light doze and dreamed of Edith. First of all he heard her low voice: "John! Oh, John Hardy! Help me, John! Help me!"

And then he thought he saw her with a Chinese robe wrapped about her, wandering along a cañon the walls of which were an iridescent pink. And she was wringing her hands and repeating: "John! Help me John! Help me."

He started from the couch with cold sweat on his forehead. "I'm going plumb crazy!" he muttered. "First time I've dreamed of her, though God knows she hasn't been out of my thoughts since she came here."

He pulled on his coat and went out to the corral. He mounted Pete and led Miss Lucky with a light pack on her saddle. The moon was just slipping over the far-flung silver line of the Indian range when Pete trotted out of the gate. John's first stop was at the Lawsons' for news.

"We ain't got a trace," reported Mame, "except one of the children found a little piece of her bath-robe on a nail in the corral. Looks like she must have dreamed of the blue roan."

"Let me see that piece of cloth," said John, following Mame into the kitchen.

The rancher's wife pointed to the bit of blue silk lying among the teacups on the table.

"What kind of a bath-robe was it?"

"One of those Chinese things you see in the store-windows at Salt Lake. She said somebody brought it to her from China."

John stared at Mame with widening eyes.

"You fix me a bundle of clothes for her, Mame," he said.

When she had done this, he rushed out of the room and put Pete to the lope. At the foot of Eagle Mountain he pulled up while he thought rapidly. He could recall a cañon weathered out of the pink sandstone which composed the chaos that lay between Dead Fire range and Many Eagles. But it was so inaccessible that it seemed to him highly improbable that Edith could have come upon it. And yet, even as he sat debating with his common sense, he seemed to hear the low voice of his dream: "John! Oh, John, help me!"

With a groan he whistled to Miss Lucky and turned into the Many Eagles trail. He knew he was a fool. He knew that Edith must have wakened long before she had come this far, even if this had been her direction. Yet the potency of the dream overcame every protest advanced by his lifelong experience in the hills, and hour after hour he pushed toward the chaotic valley beyond Many Eagles.

 

IT WAS after midnight when the trail around a mountainside opened into a cañon with sheer sides remotely edged by pines. The sides themselves were barren, but in the moonlight of a brilliancy of color that was almost unbelievable. There were many rock heaps on the floor of the cañon. John threaded his way carefully among these, stopping to rest at frequent intervals. The elevation was over eight thousand feet and the horses were making heavy work of it.

In one of these intervals he heard the dull, thudding tramp of an unshod horse. Before he could start his small cavalcade onward to meet the sound, a figure in a blue robe stumbled into view. It was Edith, and she was leading the blue roan.

When she saw John, she stopped and began to sob:"Oh, John! John Hardy!"

John dismounted and strode toward her.

"Here I am, Miss Archer! What in heaven's name has happened?"

"I shot him!" sobbed Edith. "I had to!"

"Shot him! Are you hurt?" John took the lead-rope from her and she clung to his arm, struggling to control her sobs.

"No; only bruised. Don't speak to me for a minute. I'm trying so hard not to make a fool of myself."

John stood patiently for a moment; then he said: "Suppose you don't try to talk at all until you get into the warm things I've got on Miss Lucky's saddle for you? You put 'em on while I go round the rocks here and make us a little camp."

Edith nodded and John, after giving her the bundle of clothing, proceeded to make a great fire of sage brush and scrub cedar. By the time the fire was going well, Edith appeared around the rocks in her riding-suit, her face white and tense.

"Will you give me a drink of water?" she asked huskily.

John held his canteen to her lips. "Now, I'll put the coffee on to boil and get out the sandwiches Aunty Farmer fixed for me Then you can tell me about it when you aren't so faint and cold."

"I must tell you now!" panted Edith.

John looked at her keenly. "Let me put the coffee-pot on and then you can go ahead," he said. "Sit down here out of the smoke."

"I didn't get to sleep quickly Saturday night," began Edith, "and when I did I had troubled dreams. I kept dreaming of the blue roan and that both you and she were hurt. I thought I'd better go to your rescue, and in my dream I went out to the corral, roped the blue roan and led her away. She was very hard to lead and she kept pulling me down, and finally one specially hard fall wakened me. I was alone on a strange mountain trail, so cold, and with my slippers all wet with dew. And I was so out of breath that I lay down under a cedar tree. While I was huddled there, I heard horses coming. I didn't know who it might be or whether it was just strays, so I didn't call. And then Dick Holton rode by with three horses, and one of them was the blue roan!"

"The blue roan! Did you really let her out? I know you couldn't have roped her."

"I must have let her out. I always did dislike him, and he's the last man in Lost Trail I'd have wanted to rescue me. But I wasn't going to let him get away with that beautiful horse, especially as I felt guilty about her. So, after he had gone by, I followed him. I thought maybe he'd put her somewhere for safekeeping and then I could tell Mr. Lawson."

"And you followed him? Far?"

"I don't know how far. It seemed a long time. And then I fell and, like a great baby, I cried out and he heard me and came back. I was sitting against the rock I'd slipped off of and he just stood and looked at me. And I said, 'Where are you going with the blue roan?' and he said: "I'm going to put her where your friend Hardy'll never glom his big hands on her. She was wandering loose and she's mine now."

"And then I saw that he'd been drinking heavily and I told him I'd been walking in my sleep and that if he'd tell me the way home I'd be grateful. Then he laughed and said, 'God, lots of girls have been fond of me, but none of them ever followed me this way!' and he stooped over me and I struck him as hard as I could and he struck me back and tried to pick me up and kiss me. And he said, 'I'I1 fix it so you'll never want to tell any one in Lost Trail you've seen me.'"

John walked up and down before the fire, his big hands opening and closing.

"Then I fought him and managed to get his six-shooter out of his belt and I pressed it against him and pulled the trigger. And he dropped and rolled over—dead.

"Then I went and got the blue roan's lead-rope and started for what I thought was home, and I got lost and I thought you'd never come."

John stood staring at her, cold sweat on his lips. "How do you know he is dead? Did you examine him? Where did the bullet go?"

"I don't know where it went. I couldn't have touched him, could I? I wasn't trying to run away. I am going to give myself up to the sheriff as soon as I get back."

"Give yourself up, nothing!" cried John. "If you hadn't shot him, Lost Trail would have made a sieve of him. No one can get away with manhandling a woman or horse-stealing in these ranges, even if he is drunk. But maybe you didn't kill him."

He poured her a cup of coffee and held it to her lips with big hands that shook. She drank it and ate a couple of sandwiches.

"Could you sleep a little?" he asked, when she had finished.

She looked at him with horror.

"Sleep? No! How could I sleep with his awful voice in my ears?"

"Have you any idea where you were when it happened?"

"No," replied Edith.

"Was there any landmark you could describe? The moon was still high?"

Edith answered carefully: "The moon was just setting. There was a spring with a big tree growing above it."

"Blue Aspen spring! Edith, you've swung clear around the mountain and aren't two miles from it now. We can get to it by a short cut up the wall yonder."

"Get to it? Do I have to see him again?"

"Edith, I want to see whether you really killed him or not before we report to Lost Trail. You can stay here——"

"No! No! I dare not stay alone!"

"You needn't look at him, but stay back with the horses. Did you get any sleep to-day?"

Edith shook her head impatiently.

"No. I told you I couldn't sleep with his voice in my ears."

"Will you do something for me?" asked John gently. "Won't you lie down on my blanket here by the fire and rest with your eyes closed until dawn?"

Edith looked up at him pitifully.

"I know you despise me, but I don't dare to close my eyes unless you promise to sit by me."

"I promise," said John simply.

 

HE SPREAD the blanket for her, and when she had laid down on it he sat beside her. She slipped cold, trembling fingers into his and closed her eyes. John sat with his back against the rocks. The moon had set and the firelight shone alone on the slender, rigid body of the girl, on her pale set face. A half-hour slipped by; then John felt Edith's fingers relax, saw the lines between her eyes disappear and knew that she slept. He tossed more wood on the fire with his free hand and waited. An owl hooted loudly. Edith started and jumped at once to her feet. Then she stared at John while recollection awoke.

"I'm ready to start," she said.

"The sun will be here in a few minutes." John nodded to the east.

Swiftly the dawn was pricking out the fronded tops of the pines far above them. Faintly above the farthest pines rose the gigantic white outline of the Indian range, moment by moment growing more vividly colorful until its splendor paled the prismatic tints of the cañon. They watched the mighty day arrive in silence. When the sun was free of the pines, John turned to the horses. They were pulling restlessly at their ropes.

"These poor brutes are thirsty," he said, "Did you water the blue roan yesterday?"

"Yes; in the afternoon at a little muddy spring. She grazed there, too."

"Did you have any trouble leading her?"

"Not Wasn't it queer!"

"Not so queer," mused John. "Sometimes you find a horse that's like a good dog and recognizes a friend. So, beauty!"—this to the restless blue roan as he approached her.

"Let me lead her," said Edith. "I do think a great deal of that horse!"

"Yes?" John smiled a little. "One might not have suspected it. You mount Miss Lucky and I'll give you the roan's lead."

And so they started. It was a short and not too arduous trip back to the Blue Aspen spring. It came into view as they rounded the shoulder of the mountain. First they saw Dick's two cow-ponies standing by the pool. Then they saw Dick lying by the water's edge. He raised his head at their approach. Edith gave a quick gasp. John dismounted and strode over to Dick's side.

"Where'd she get you?" he demanded.

"Left side and right hip," replied Dick weakly. "I was drunk."

"Bleeding much?"

"Not if I don't move." He lay staring at the sky, ghastly pale and worn.

"I'll leave you some grub," said John. "I'm going back and send the sheriff up there. I am not going to trust myself to touch you, you can bet on that. If you aren't dead by the time he gets here, my advice is that you keep your mouth shut."

Dick's lips set in a grim line, but he said nothing. And so they watered the horses and rode away and left him.

Edith did not speak for some moments. The relief was at first more than she could voice, but when after a mile of hard trail John called a halt for breakfast, she said, "It's like waking from a nightmare!"

"I know." John nodded. "I'm about as relieved as you are, but only for your sake. He deserved more than he got."

 

THE breakfast was on the side of a mountain facing west. Remotely below lay the valley of Lost Trail. As they sat waiting for the coffee to boil, John said abruptly,

"I wanted to kill him where he lay."

"After all"—Edith's eyes were on the red mists of Bear Mountain—"he didn't harm me and I could save the blue roan."

John looked at Edith with something finer than admiration in his blue eyes. After a long pause, "What are you going to tell the sheriff?" he asked.

"I am going to tell him the truth."

"You'd better let me say I shot him while I was taking the blue roan and that I picked you up elsewhere."

Edith stared at his grim face, puzzled for a moment, then she exclaimed: "Oh, I see! But I'm not going to let you lie for me. Lies are very difficult. I never have met any one I thought clever enough to lie. And what about the story Holton will tell?"

"I'll bet Dick tells nothing and I'll bet he never stays in Lost Trail so long as I'm in it. And Lawson may shoot him up again for stealing the blue roan. He's good for a long stay in Rawlins if he gets well, and when he gets out of Rawlins, or before, if I can get at him, I am going to beat him up so his own mother won't know him. But what I have got to do now is to keep the he and she gossips of Lost Trail from bandying your name about. Just leave the story to me, will you, Edith?"

He crossed over to her and sat down beside her, looking into her face with such a depth of earnestness that she said, with a little uncertain color flaring in her cheeks,

"Yes; if it won't get you into trouble!"

"It won't!" He hesitated, then went on, "You haven't asked me how I came to be looking for you in such an unlikely spot."

Edith watched his face without speaking and John went on in his soft drawl:

"We were all hunting for you from yesterday noon on. At dusk I went home for fresh horses and I took a nap while I was waiting for the moon to rise. I dreamed that I saw you in the pink cañon in that blue Chinese thing and that you were calling to me like this: 'John! John! Help me, John!' Did you really call to me?"

"Yes," admitted Edith reluctantly.

"Why?" Edith did not answer. "Did you call to the others, Hank and Pink and Art?"

Still she did not reply, and John drew a sudden long breath. "Do you remember that talk we had at the schoolhouse, Friday afternoon, and I said that a man, even a rider, liked something beautiful and fine in his life once in a while. What did you think when I said that?"

"I thought how little the average woman really knows what goes on inside a man's mind. And I've been thinking that ever since. You see, any woman always thinks she's more refined, has more delicate perceptions than any man."

"Lots of 'em have," said John. "Me, I wouldn't know a delicate perception if I met one. Is that all you thought?"

Edith smiled whimsically. "No, I thought that most women were stupid egoists, me being among those present."

"I'm not sure what one of those critters is, but I know you aren't one. But what did you really think about what I said, Edith?"

"Well, I thought how blind you were not to see the enchanting beauty of the Lost Trail country and I thought, as I'd thought so many times before, how strange it was that all of Lost Trail's conversation was in sordid terms of cattle-raising when some of it might quite normally be in terms of the most soul-stirring scenery that ever intrigued a poor, futile Easterner."

John stared at Bear Mountain and the glory of the brilliant clouds beyond it, as if he never before had seen them.

"All my life," he said, "I have been looking for beauty till I found you!"

"Me!" exclaimed Edith, "I'm just a tired Easterner, with no nerve."

John grunted with a twisted smile at the blue roan, then he said: "Do you remember that I said that maybe there might be something pretty fine about love that we Lost Trail folks didn't know existed? And you answered that there ought to be something as fine here in love as there was in the beauty of the ranges. Edith, will you tell me what love means to you?"

She answered a little hesitatingly: "I thought I knew when I was in my teens, but as I've grown older I've discovered that what I thought was love could never endure. Now, I know that, no matter what any one says to the contrary, the love that endures is a thing of the mind, intangible and permanent and based on the irresistible attraction of soul to soul and not of body to body."

John cleared his throat. "If your mind or soul or whatever it was called across the mountains to us yesterday and only I heard and answered, might it mean that I felt this—this—intangible—oh, Edith, help me! I never would have had courage to say this much if you had not called to me in my dream."

"I called only to you."

"Why?" urged John.

"When I saw you break the blue roan with gentleness, I knew that I could care for you, but I've always hated the thought of marriage so! But—but now after this experience—John, I guess you've broken me with gentleness, too!"

"God!" breathed John. "Edith, could it mean that you would marry me?"

"It might." Her voice was a little uneven.

"Do you think you know how much and how little a man like me could bring you?"

Edith replied slowly, "I know that you are fine and simple and beautiful, like your great hills, and that your inner ear heard me call in my deep need."

John rose suddenly and lifted Edith to her feet. He took her tired face gently between his big palms and looked long into her eyes. Then he lifted her to his heart and kissed her. And she lay quietly, as if, after long wanderings, she had at last come home.