The young man shaded his eyes with his hand as if to screen them from the fire, but she noticed that the back of his hand hid them from her, too. He found a difficulty in beginning. When at last he spoke, his voice was rough with feeling.
"Of course, you"ll despise me--you of all people. How could you help it?"
Her body leaned toward him ever so slightly. Love lit her face like a soft light.
"Shall I? How do you know?"
"It cuts so deep--goes to the bottom of things. If a fellow is wild or even bad, he may redeem himself. But you can"t make a man out of a yellow cur. The stuff isn"t there." The words came out jerkily as if with some physical difficulty.
"If you mean about coming up to the park, I know about that," she said gently. "Mr. Dingwell told father. I think it was splendid of you."
"No, that isn"t it. I knew I was right in coming and that some day you would understand." He dropped the hand from his face and looked straight at her. "Dave didn"t tell your father that I had to be flogged into going, did he? He didn"t tell him that I tried to dodge out of it with excuses."
"Of course, you weren"t anxious to throw up your own affairs and run into danger for a man you had never met. Why should you be wild for the chance. But you went."
"Oh, I went. I had to go. Ryan put it up to me so that there was no escape," was his dogged, almost defiant, answer.
"I know better," the girl corrected quickly. "You put it up to yourself. You"re that way."
"Am I?" He flashed a questioning look at her. "Then, since you know that, perhaps you know, too, what--what I"m trying to tell you."
"Perhaps I do," she whispered softly to the fire.
There was panic in his eyes. "--That . . . that I--"
"--That you are sensitive and have a good deal of imagination," the girl concluded gently.
"No, I"ll not feed my vanity with pleasant lies to-night." He gave a little gesture of self-scorn as he rose to throw some dry sticks on the fire. "What I mean and what you mean is that--that I"m an arrant coward." Roy gulped the last words out as if they burned his throat.
"I don"t mean that at all," she flamed. "How can you say such a thing about yourself when everybody knows that you"re the bravest man in Washington County?"
"No--no. I"m a born trembler." From where he stood beyond the fire he looked across at her with dumb anguish in his eyes. "You say yourself you"ve noticed it. Probably everybody that knows me has."
"I didn"t say that." Her dark eyes challenged his very steadily.
"What I said was that you have too much imagination to rush into danger recklessly. You picture it all out vividly beforehand and it worries you. Isn"t that the way of it?"
He nodded, ashamed.
"But when the time comes, n.o.body could be braver than you," she went on. "You"ve been tried out a dozen times in the last three months.
You have always made good."
"Made good! If you only knew!" he answered bitterly.
"Knew what? I saw you down at Hart"s when Dan Meldrum ordered you to kneel and beg. But you gamed it out, though you knew he meant to kill you."
He flushed beneath the tan. "I was too paralyzed to move. That"s the simple truth."
"Were you too paralyzed to move down at the arcade of the Silver Dollar?" she flashed at him.
"It was the drink in me. I wasn"t used to it and it went to my head."
"Had you been drinking that time at the depot?" she asked with a touch of friendly irony.
"That wasn"t courage. If it would have saved me, I would have run like a rabbit. But there was no chance. The only hope I had was to throw a fear into him. But all the time I was sick with terror."
She rose and walked round the camp-fire to him. Her eyes were shining with a warm light of admiration. Both hands went out to him impulsively.
"My friend, that is the only kind of courage really worth having. That kind you earn. It is yours because it is born of the spirit. You have fought for it against the weakness of the flesh and the timidity of your own soul. Some men are born without sense or imagination. They don"t know enough to be afraid. But the man who tramples down a great fear wins his courage by earning it." She laughed a little, to make light of her own enthusiasm. "Oh, I know I"m preaching like a little prig. But it"s the truth, just the same."
At the touch of her fingers his pulses throbbed. But once more he tried to make her understand.
"No, I"ve had luck all the way through. Do you remember that night at the cabin--before we went up the canon?"
"Yes."
"Some one shot at me as I ran into the cabin. I was so frightened that I piled all the furniture against the door and hid in the cellar. It was always that way with me. I used to jump if anybody rode up unexpectedly at the ranch. Every little thing set my nerves fluttering."
"But it isn"t so now."
"No, not so much."
"That"s what I"m telling you," she triumphed. "You came out here from a soft life in town. But you"ve grown tough because you set your teeth to go through no matter what the cost. I wish I could show you how much I . . . admire you. Dad feels that way, too. So does Ned."
"But I don"t deserve it. That"s what humiliates me."
"Don"t you?" She poured out her pa.s.sionate protest. "Do you think I don"t know what happened back there at the prospect hole? Do you think I don"t know that you put Dan Meldrum down in the pit--and him with a gun in his hand? Was it a coward that did that?"
"So you knew that all the time," he cried.
"I heard him calling you--and I went close. Yes, I knew it. But you would never have told me because it might seem like bragging."
"It was easy enough. I wasn"t thinking of myself, but of you. He saw I meant business and he wilted."
"You were thinking about me--and you forgot to be afraid," the girl exulted.
"Yes, that was it." A wave of happiness broke over his heart as the sunlight does across a valley at dawn. "I"m always thinking of you.
Day and night you fill my thoughts, hillgirl. When I"m riding the range--whatever I do--you"re with me all the time."
"Yes."
Her lips were slightly parted, eyes eager and hungry. The heart of the girl drank in his words as the thirsty roots of a rosebush do water.
She took a long deep breath and began to tremble.
"I think of you as the daughter of the sun and the wind. Some day you will be the mother of heroes, the wife of a man--"
"Yes," she prompted again, and the face lifted to his was flushed with innocent pa.s.sion.
The shy invitation of her dark-lashed eyes was not to be denied. He flung away discretion and s.n.a.t.c.hed her into his arms. An inarticulate little sound welled up from her throat, and with a gesture wholly savage and feminine her firm arms crept about his neck and fastened there.