The Cow Puncher | Page 6

fell
down stream. The water was deeper than it looked, and colder than it
looked, and when she scrambled up the farther bank she was a very wet
young woman indeed. She was conscious of a deep annoyance toward
young Elden. A fine bridge, that! She would tell him--but this thought
died at its birth with the consciousness that Elden would be amused
over the incident, and would be at little pains to disguise his merriment.
And then she laughed, and ran along up the road.
The grips were duly found, and Irene congratulated herself that she and
her father were in the habit of traveling with equipment for over night.
She had even a spare skirt along, with which she was able to disguise
her mishap at the stream, although she took the precaution not to make
the change until she was safe back over the narrow bridge. And this
time she used a stick. Arrived at the house, she deftly wrapped a
bandage about her father's injury, and set to work at the preparation of
supper--a task not strange to her, as her mother considered it correct
that her daughter should have a working knowledge of kitchen affairs.
Her equipment was meagre, and she spent more time scouring than
cooking, but her heart beat high with the spirit of adventure.
Once, during the evening, she took a glance into the other room. It was
even less inviting than Dave's, with walls bare of any adornment, save
dirty garments that hung from nails driven in the logs. On the rude bed
lay an old man; she could see only part of his face; a grey moustache
drooping over an open mouth, and a florid cheek turned to the glow of
the setting sun. On a chair beside the bed sat a bottle, and the room
reeked with the smell of breath charged with alcohol. She gently closed
the door, and busied herself through the long evening with reforms in
the kitchen, and with little ministrations designed to relieve the
sufferings of her father.
The sun sank behind the Rockies, and a darkness, soft and mystical and

silent, stole up the valley, hushing even the noiseless day. Presently the
glow of the rising moon burst in ruddy effulgence over the foothills to
the east, first with the effect of fire upon their crests, and then as a great,
slowly-whitening ball soaring high into the fathomless heaven. The girl
stood framed in the open window, and the moonlight painted her face
to the purest ivory, and toyed with the rich brown fastness of her hair,
and gleamed from a single ornament at her throat. And she thought of
the young horseman galloping to town; wondered if he had yet set out
on his homeward journey, and the eerie depths of the valley
communicated to her a fantastic admiration for his skill and bravery.
She was under the spell. She was in a new world, where were manhood,
and silence, and the realities of being; and moonlight, and great gulfs of
shadow between the hills, and large, friendly stars, and soft breezes
pushing this way and that without definite direction, and strange, quiet
noises from out of the depths, and the incense of the evergreens, and a
young horseman galloping into the night. And conventions had been
swept away, and it was correct to live, and to live!
CHAPTER TWO
The first flush of dawn was mellowing the eastern sky when the girl
was awakened from uneasy sleep by sounds in the yard in front of the
ranch house. She had spent most of the night by her father's side, and
although he had at last prevailed upon her to seek some rest for herself,
she had done so under protest and without undressing. Now, after the
first dazed moment of returning consciousness, she was on her feet and
through the door.
The stars were still shining brightly through the cold air. In the faint
light she could distinguish a team and wagon, and men unhitching. She
approached, and, in a voice that sounded strangely distant in the
vastness of the calm night, called, "Is that you, Dave?"
And in a moment she wondered how she had dared call him Dave. But
she soon had other cause for wonder, for the boy replied from near
beside her, in that tone of friendly confidence which springs so
spontaneously in the darkness, "Yes, Reenie, and the doctor, too. We'll

have Mr. Hardy fixed up in no time. How did he stand the night?"
How dared he call her Reenie? A flush of resentment rose in her breast
only to be submerged in the sudden remembrance that she had first
called him Dave. That surely gave him the right to address her as he
had done. But