"Nothing exciting. But I"d sure like to see any blamed old slide get the best of me, that"s all. I"m going to seal that slide down so that it"ll stay there for a million years. And when the last trump sounds, and Sonoma Mountain and all the other mountains pa.s.s into nothingness, that old slide will be still a-standing there, held up by the roots."
He pa.s.sed his arm around her and pulled her down on his knees.
"Say, little woman, you sure miss a lot by living here on the ranch--music, and theatres, and such things. Don"t you ever have a hankering to drop it all and go back?"
So great was his anxiety that he dared not look at her, and when she laughed and shook her head he was aware of a great relief. Also, he noted the undiminished youth that rang through that same old-time boyish laugh of hers.
"Say," he said, with sudden fierceness, "don"t you go fooling around that slide until after I get the trees in and rooted. It"s mighty dangerous, and I sure can"t afford to lose you now."
He drew her lips to his and kissed her hungrily and pa.s.sionately.
"What a lover!" she said; and pride in him and in her own womanhood was in her voice.
"Look at that, Dede." He removed one encircling arm and swept it in a wide gesture over the valley and the mountains beyond. "The Valley of the Moon--a good name, a good name. Do you know, when I look out over it all, and think of you and of all it means, it kind of makes me ache in the throat, and I have things in my heart I can"t find the words to say, and I have a feeling that I can almost understand Browning and those other high-flying poet-fellows. Look at Hood Mountain there, just where the sun"s striking. It was down in that crease that we found the spring."
"And that was the night you didn"t milk the cows till ten o"clock," she laughed. "And if you keep me here much longer, supper won"t be any earlier than it was that night."
Both arose from the bench, and Daylight caught up the milk-pail from the nail by the door. He paused a moment longer to look out over the valley.
"It"s sure grand," he said.
"It"s sure grand," she echoed, laughing joyously at him and with him and herself and all the world, as she pa.s.sed in through the door.
And Daylight, like the old man he once had met, himself went down the hill through the fires of sunset with a milk pail on his arm.