Horse Heaven Hill. Zane Grey

across the sage. So Marigold went, after all! A little fire ran along his veins. Presently he turned again to the girl, to observe that instantly she averted her eyes.

      “Chaps is pretty warm. Why not rest him?”

      “Yes, I was about to walk him when you came in sight. . . . His name is not Chaps for me, but Cream Puff.”

      “Good. I like yours better,” commended Stanley, but did not divulge that the reason was that Blanding had named the mustang.

      “What’s the name of yours?” asked Lark, reaching a guarded hand to his horse.

      “Boots.”

      “The same as Marigold calls you? Very poorly named, both of you.”

      “Boots harks back to my football days at the university.”

      “Football. There’s so much I’ve never seen,” said the girl dreamily. “When were you in college?”

      “I graduated in June, two years ago.”

      “Did Marigold ever see you play?”

      “Oh, yes, often.” Then abruptly changing the subject, he said, “Lark, let’s get off and rest ourselves, while your horse is resting.”

      “Really I—I ought to start back,” she rejoined, but it was certain that she seemed impelled to stay.

      “Come. It’s hours till lunchtime. And what’s the difference, anyhow?” he urged, seriously enough.

      “All right,” she agreed, and swinging her leg she slipped off in a single movement. Then, standing there, she seemed different again, taller, slimmer, yet undeniably a girl.

      Stanley dismounted, and taking the reins of her horse he suggested, “Let’s go up to the pines. It’s only a step or so. You’ll like the view.”

      It was more than a step, but she followed him without comment. Soon they reached the band of pines, growing far apart, black and straight, with their spreading branches of thin foliage rustling in the wind. The ground was brown with pine needles.

      “It’s pleasant here—if you have no hounding memories,” said Stanley, smiling at her, as she stood uncertain and shy before him, bareheaded again. How rich and thick her brown hair was with its glints of gold! In the clear open light he saw her eyes to better advantage than at any time before—dark, velvety eyes, full of tawny, slumberous depths. They did not meet his.

      “Sit here, Lark, and look out across the sage toward Horse Heaven Hill. Isn’t that the limit of a name? I’ll get my field glasses.”

      He returned presently to find Lark absorbed in the view. It pleased him that she seemed rapt. Once upon a time Marigold, sitting right there, had lain back on the pine needles to laugh at his rhapsodies on the scenery, and she had drawled, “Ain’t nature grand?” He had never let himself go again, regarding the beauty of anything. Remembering, he was curious to see how this girl would respond. He waited a long while, during which he did not yield to his desire to look at her instead of the expanse before them.

      Still, the scene was always soul-satisfying to Stanley, somehow unaccountably tranquilizing and helpful. He needed it now. The wind was out of the west and had just lost its cool edge, but appeared more laden with the incense of the sage. The slope below them slanted away gradually, down to the level expanse, which extended westward in fifty miles of unbroken plain, rolling in leagues of slow ascent or descent, onto the blue mountain that was called a haven for wild horses.

      “Oh, so lovely!” murmured the girl at last. “All so gray, so lonely, so monotonous!”

      “Lark, you have hit upon its fascination,” replied Stanley gladly. “The endless gray, the loneliness, the eternal monotony!—Oh, you have not disappointed me.”

      She flashed at him a fleeting, surprised look, enough to make him marvel at what her eyes might express if they were given a cue to love or passion. She had depth, this girl, and feeling.

      “I see wild horses out there,” she said.

      “You do? Where? I can’t see any. You must have the eye of an eagle.”

      “I might be wrong. Let me have your glasses.”

      While she adjusted these and trained them on the gray expanse, Stanley bent his own unsatisfied gaze upon the curly, shapely head, the clear, tanned cheek, the rounded neck and shoulder, the strong brown wrists and hands. She was astoundingly attractive.

      “Yes, I thought so. Wild horses! And sure a lot of them.”

      “Lark, you love wild horses,” he asserted, not asking.

      “More than anything. My country is full of them. Oh, how I wish those wild horses out there could get down to the ranges of the Salmon! Then they would be free.”

      “I’m with you, Lark. You’ve heard of the drive made recently. Hurd Blanding and El Wade pulled it off. Bribed the Clespelems. It stuck in my craw, that deal. Three dollars a head—for chicken feed!”

      “Oh, it was hideous!” cried Lark, in sudden low passion. “All for a little money! Those wild horses are not grazing off the range. There’s ten times as much feed here as we have in Idaho.”

      “Pretty raw, I’ll agree, Lark,” rejoined Stanley. “There were some good ponies in that wild bunch. I saw them. Made me sick—the way they had them tailed.”

      “Tailed! What’s that?” asked Lark swiftly, and now he almost jumped under the full gaze of her eyes, wonderful, clear, almost hard.

      “The cowboys call it tailing. It’s done after they trap the horses.”

      “They lasso them, throw them, and tie the tail of one to the head of another?”

      “Precisely. And it’s rotten, believe me.”

      “I feared that. I’ve heard of it. Oh, I hate them—I hate them! If any cowpunchers did that on my range, I’d shoot them.”

      Stanley realized then, with the bell-like ring of her voice in his ear, that he had passed the stage of interest in Lark Burrell. He was wholly fascinated. Lying back upon the pine needles, he closed his eyes and tried to think.