The Furnace of Gold | Page 6

a very poor notion of her horsemanship. Her pride was aroused. She would show him something--at least that no horse could make this journey without her!
"Thank you," she said, and advancing to the roan she addressed herself to Dave. "Will you please help me up. Mr. Van may assist my maid."
Dave grinned and performed his offices as best he could, which was strongly, if not with grace. Van shook a threatening fist, behind his captive's back. He had meant to take this honor to himself.
Fairly tossing the greatly delighted little Elsa to the seat on the bay, he mounted his own sturdy animal and immediately started for the canyon below, leaving Beth and her maid to trail behind.
The girl's heart all but failed her. Whither were they going?--and towards what Fate? What could be the outcome of a journey like this, undertaken so blindly, with no chance for resistance? The horseman had stubbornly refused a reply to her question; he was calmly riding off before them now with the utmost indifference to her comfort. There was nothing to do but to follow, and resign herself to--the Lord alone knew what. The little roan mare, indeed, required no urging; she was tugging at the bit to be off. With one last look of helplessness at the station and Dave--who someway bore the hint of a fatherly air upon him--she charged her nerves with all possible resolution and rode on after her leader.
Elsa permitted her broncho to trudge at the tail of the column. She dared to cast one shy, disconcerting little glance at Dave--and he suddenly felt he would burst into flame and consume himself utterly to ashes.
The great canyon yawned prodigiously where its rock gates stood open to grant the party admission to the sanctum of the hills. Sheer granite walls, austere and frowning, rose in sculptured immensity on either side, but the trail under foot was scored between some scattered wild-peach shrubs, interspersed with occasional bright-green clumps of manzanita. The air was redolent of warmth and fragrance that might with fitness have advertised the presence in the hills of some glorified goddess of love--some lofty, invisible goddess, guarded by her mountain snows, yet still too languorous and voluptuous to pass without at least trailing on the summery air the breath that exhaled from her being. It was all a delight, despite vague alarms, and the promise ahead was inviting.
Van continued straight onward, with never so much as a turn of his head, to the horses in the rear. He seemed to have quite forgotten the two half-frightened women in his wake. Beth had ample opportunity for observing again the look of strength and grace upon him. However, she found her attention very much divided between tumultuous joyance in the mountain grandeur, bathed in the marvelously life-exciting air, and concern for the outcome of the day. If a faint suggestion of pique at the manner in which the horseman ignored her presence crept subconsciously into all her meditations, she did not confess it to herself.
Elsa's horrid little habit of accepting anything and everything with the most irresponsible complacency rendered the situation aggravating. It was so utterly impossible to discuss with such a being even such of the morning's developments as the relationship of mistress and maid might otherwise have permitted.
A mile beyond the mouth of the canyon the slight ascent was ended, the chasm widened, rough slopes succeeded the granite walls, and a charming little valley, emerald green and dotted with groups of quaking aspen trees, stretched far towards the wooded mountain barriers, looming hugely ahead. It was like a dainty lake of grass, abundantly supplied with little islands.
The sheer enchantment of it, bathed as it was in sun-gold, and sheltered by prodigious, snow-capped summits, so intensely white against the intensity of azure, aroused some mad new ecstacy in all Beth's being. She could almost have done something wild--she knew not what; and all the alarm subsided from her thoughts. As if in answer to her tumult of joy, Van spurred his pinto to a gallop. Instantly responding to her lift of the reins, Beth's roan went romping easily forward. The bay at the rear, with Elsa, followed rhythmically, pounding out a measure on the turf.
A comparatively short session of this more rapid locomotion sufficed for the transit of the cove--that is, of the wide-open portion. The trail then dived out of sight in a copse where pine trees were neighbors of the aspens. Van disappeared, though hardly more than fifty feet ahead. Through low-hanging boughs, that she needs must push aside, Beth followed blindly, now decidedly piqued by the wholly ungallant indifference to her fate of the horseman leading the way.
She caught but a glimpse of him, now and again, in the density of the growth. How strange it