"I referred to worthy young Americans of--" began her father who, to do him justice, was so satisfied with his own position that no foreign t.i.tle "dazzled" him in the least degree.
"Rittenhouse Square," cut in Robert Maitland with amused sarcasm. "Well, Enid, you seem to have run the gamut of the east pretty thoroughly, come out and spend the summer with me in Colorado. My Denver house is open to you, we have a ranch amid the foothills, or if you are game we can break away from civilization entirely and find some unexplored, unknown canon in the heart of the mountains and camp there. We"ll get back to nature, which seems to be impossible in Philadelphia, and you will see things and learn things that you will never see or learn anywhere else.
It"ll do you good, too; from what I hear, you have been going the pace and those cheeks of yours are a little too pale for so splendid a girl, you look too tired under the eyes for youth and beauty."
"I believe I am not very fit," said the girl, "and if father will permit--"
"Of course, of course," said Stephen Maitland. "You are your own mistress anyway, and having no mother"--Enid"s mother had died in her infancy--"I suppose that I could not interfere or object if I wished to, but no marrying or giving in marriage: Remember that."
"Nonsense, father," answered the young woman lightly. "I am not anxious to a.s.sume the bonds of wedlock."
"Well, that settles it," said Robert Maitland. "We"ll give you a royal good time. I must run up to New York and Boston for a few days, but I shall be back in a week and I can pick you up then."
"What is the house in Denver, is it er--may I ask, provided with all modern conveniences and--" began the elder Maitland nervously.
Robert Maitland laughed.
"What do you take us for, Steve? Do you ever read the western newspapers?"
"I confess that I have not given much thought to the west since I studied geography and--_The Philadelphia Ledger_ has been thought sufficient for the family since--"
"Gracious!" exclaimed Maitland. "The house cost half a million dollars if you must know it, and if there is anything that modern science can contribute to comfort and luxury that isn"t in it, I don"t know what it is. Shall it be the house in Denver, or the ranch, or a real camp in the wilds, Enid?"
"First the house in Denver," said Enid, "and then the ranch and then the mountains."
"Right O! That shall be the program."
"Will my daughter"s life be perfectly safe from the Cowboys, Indians and Desperadoes?"
"Quite safe," answered Robert, with deep gravity. "The cowboys no longer shoot up the city and it has been years since the Indians have held up even a trolley car. The only real desperado in my acquaintance is the mildest, gentlest old stage driver in the west."
"Do you keep up an acquaintance with men of that cla.s.s, still?" asked his brother in great surprise.
"You know I was Sheriff in a border county for a number of years and--"
"But you must surely have withdrawn from all such society now."
"Out west," said Robert Maitland, "when we know a man and like him, when we have slept by him on the plains, ridden with him through the mountains, fought with him against some border terror, some bad man thirsting to kill, we don"t forget him, we don"t cut his acquaintance, and it doesn"t make any difference whether the one or the other of us is rich or poor. I have friends who can"t frame a grammatical sentence, who habitually eat with their knives, yet who are absolutely devoted to me and I to them. The man is the thing out there." He smiled and turned to Enid. "Always excepting the supremacy of woman," he added.
"How fascinating!" exclaimed the girl. "I want to go there right away."
And this was the train of events which brought about the change. Behold the young lady astride of a horse for the first time in her life in a divided skirt, that fashion prevalent elsewhere not having been accepted by the best equestriennes of Philadelphia. She was riding ahead of a lumbering mountain wagon, surrounded by other riders, which was loaded with baggage, drawn by four st.u.r.dy broncos and followed by a number of obstinate little burros at present unenc.u.mbered with packs which would be used when they got further from civilization and the way was no longer practicable for anything on wheels.
Miss Enid Maitland was clad in a way that would have caused her father a stroke of apoplexy if he could have been suddenly made aware of her dress, if she had burst into the drawing-room without announcement for instance. Her skirt was distinctly short, she wore heavy hobnailed shoes that laced up to her knees, she had on a bright blue sweater, a kind of a cap known as a tam-o-shanter was pinned above her glorious hair, which was closely braided and wound around her head. She wore a silk handkerchief loosely tied around her neck, a knife and revolver hung at her belt, a little watch was strapped to one wrist, a handsomely braided quirt dangled from the other, a pair of spurs adorned her heels and, most discomposing fact of all, by her side rode a handsome and dashing cavalier.
How Mr. James Armstrong might have appeared in the conventional black and white of evening clothes was not quite clear to her, for she had as yet never beheld him in that obliterating raiment, but in the habit of the west, riding trousers, heavy boots that laced to the knees, blue shirt, his head covered by a n.o.ble "Stetson," mounted on the fiery restive bronco which he rode to perfection, he was ideal. Alas for the vanity of human proposition! Mr. James Armstrong, friend and protege these many years of Mr. Robert Maitland, mine owner and cattle man on a much smaller scale than his older friend, was desperately in love with Enid Maitland, and Enid, swept off her feet by a wooing which began with precipitant ardor so soon as he laid eyes on her, was more profoundly moved by his suit, or pursuit, than she could have imagined.
_Omne ignotum pro magnifico!_
She had been wooed in the conventional fashion many times and oft, on the sands of Palm Beach, along the cliffs of Newport, in the romantic glens of Mount Desert, in the old fashioned drawing-room overlooking Rittenhouse Square. She had been proposed to in motor cars, on the decks of yachts and once even while riding to hounds, but there had been a touch of sameness about it all. Never had she been made love to with the headlong gallantry, with the dashing precipitation of the west. It had swept her from her moorings. She found almost before she was aware of it that her past experience now stood her in little stead. She awoke to a sudden realization of the fact that she was practically pledged to James Armstrong after an acquaintance of three weeks in Denver and on the ranch.
Business of the most important and critical nature required Armstrong"s presence east at this juncture, and w.i.l.l.y-nilly there was no way he could put off his departure longer. He had to leave the girl with an uneasy conscience that though he had her half-way promise, he had her but half-way won. He had s.n.a.t.c.hed the ultimate day from his business demands to ride with her on the first stage of her journey to the mountains.
CHAPTER IV
THE GAME PLAYED IN THE USUAL WAY
The road on which they advanced into the mountains was well made and well kept up. The canon through the foothills was not very deep--for Colorado--and the ascent was gentle. Naturally it wound in every direction following the devious course of the river which it frequently crossed from one side to the other on rude log bridges. A brisk gallop of a half mile or so on a convenient stretch of comparatively level going put the two in the lead far ahead of the lumbering wagon and out of sight of those others of the party who had elected to go a horseback.
There was perhaps a tacit agreement among the latter not to break in upon this growing friendship or, more frankly, not to interfere in a developing love affair.
The canon broadened here and there at long intervals and ranch houses were found in every clearing, but these were few and far between and for the most part Armstrong and Enid Maitland rode practically alone save for the pa.s.sing of an occasional lumber wagon.
"You can"t think," began the man, as they drew rein after a splendid gallop and the somewhat tired horses readily subsided into a walk, "how I hate to go back and leave you."
"And you can"t think how loath I am to have you return," the girl flashed out at him with a sidelong glance from her bright blue eyes and a witching smile from her scarlet lips.
"Enid Maitland," said the man, "you know I just worship you. I"d like to sweep you out of your saddle, lift you to the bow of mine and ride away with you. I can"t keep my hands off you, I--"
Before she realized what he would be about he swerved his horse toward her, his arm went around her suddenly. Taken completely off her guard she could make no resistance, indeed she scarcely knew what to expect until he crushed her to him and kissed her, almost roughly, full on the lips.
"How dare you!" cried the girl, her face aflame, freeing herself at last, and swinging her own horse almost to the edge of the road which here ran on an excavation some fifty feet above the river.
"How dare I?" laughed the audacious man, apparently no whit abashed by her indignation. "When I think of my opportunity I am amazed at my moderation."
"Your opportunity, your moderation?"
"Yes; when I had you helpless I took but one kiss, I might have held you longer and taken a hundred."
"And by what right did you take that one?" haughtily demanded the outraged young woman, looking at him beneath level brows while the color slowly receded from her face. She had never been kissed by a man other than a blood relation in her life--remember, suspicious reader, that she was from Philadelphia--and she resented this sudden and unauthorized caress with every atom and instinct of her still somewhat conventional being.
"But aren"t you half-way engaged to me?" he pleaded in justification, seeing the unwonted seriousness with which she had received his impudent advance. "Didn"t you agree to give me a chance?"
"I did say that I liked you very much," she admitted, "no man better, and that I thought you might--"
"Well, then--" he began.
But she would not be interrupted.
"I did not mean that you should enjoy all the privileges of a conquest before you had won me. I will thank you not to do that again, sir."
"It seems to have had a very different effect upon you than it did upon me," replied the man fervently. "I loved you before, but now, since I have kissed you, I worship you."
"It hasn"t affected me that way," retorted the girl promptly, her face still frowning and indignant. "Not at all, and--"
"Forgive me, Enid," pleaded the other. "I just couldn"t help it. You were so beautiful I had to. I took the chance. You are not accustomed to our ways."