Part 55

"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."