the trees, heavy as if it had substance. A strong exhilaration possessed Tanner. He was growing old, but the effect of the Tonto seemed to renew his youth. The solitude of the slopes and valleys, the signs of wild game in the dust of the trail, the babble of the brook, the penetrating fragrance of pine and spruce, the brush, the dead leaves, the fallen cones, the mat of needles, the lichened rocks—these were physical proofs that he had come home to the environment he loved best.
“Reckon I’ll not go away no more,” he muttered as he trudged through the gap in the cliff, up and down over the gray stones. “Onless, of course, the Ameses go,” he added as an afterthought. “Shore was a good idee thet I planned to send my winter’s catch out by stage.”
The valley of the Tonto was full of golden light. The sun had just set behind the bold brow of Mescal Ridge, and a wonderful flare of gold, thrown up against a dark bank of purple cloud, seemed to be reflected down into the valley. Cappy sat down on a log above the creek, where many a time he had rested before, and watched the magic glow on field and slope and water. Already the air had begun to cool. The gold swept by as if it had been the transparent shadow of a cloud, swift and evanescent, like a dream, or a fleeting happiness. Wild ducks went whirring down the creek, the white bars on their wings twinkling. A big buck, his coat the gray-blue of fall, crossed an opening in the brush. Up high somewhere an old gobbler was calling his flock to roost.
Tanner’s watch and reverie were interrupted by the cracking of hoofs on the rocks of the trail up the creek. Soon two riders emerged from the green, and the first was Rich Ames. He waved a glad hand, then came on at a trot. Cappy stood up, conscious of how good it was to see this Tonto lad again. Rich Ames on horseback was surely pleasant to gaze upon, but when he slid out of his saddle, in one long lithe step, he sent a thrill to the old trapper’s heart.
“Wal, lad, hyar I am, an’ damn glad to see you,” said Tanner, as he swung on the extended hand and gripped it hard.
“Same heah, old timer,” drawled Rich Ames, his cool, lazy voice in strong contrast to the smile that was like a warm flash.
The second rider trotted up and dismounted. He was as tall as Ames, only heavier, and evidently several years the senior. His features were homely, especially his enormous nose. He had a winning smile and clear gray eyes. He wore the plain jeans of the homesteader, which looked dull and drab beside Rich Ames’ gray fringed buckskin.
“Sam, it’s shore old Cappy Tanner, my trapper pard,” said Rich. “Cap, meet my friend, Sam Playford.”
“How do!” greeted Playford, with an honest grin. “What I haven’t heard about you ain’t worth hearin’.”
“Wal, any friend of Rich’s is mine,” replied Cappy, cordially. “You’re new hyarabouts?”
“Yes. I come in last April.”
“Homesteadin’?”
“I been tryin’ to. But between these two Ames twins I have a plumb job of it.”
“Twins?—Which ones?”
The boys laughed uproariously, and Rich jabbed a thumb into Sam’s side.
“Cappy, it shore’s not Manzi an’ Mescal,” he drawled.
“Ahuh! Must be Nesta an’ you, then? I’m always forgettin’ you’re twins, too. Though, Lord knows, you look like two peas in a pod.”
“Yep, Cap, only I take a back seat to Nesta.”
“Where is thet lass? My pore eyes are achin’ for a sight of her,” returned Tanner.
“You’ll have them cured pronto, then,” said Rich. “For she’s comin’ along the trail somewheres behind. Mad as a wet hen!”
“Mad! What’s the matter?”
“Nothin’. She’s been stayin’ at Snells’, over at Turkey Flat. She an’ Lil Snell have got thick since last winter. I like Lil an’ I reckon she’s all right. But all the same I don’t want Nesta stayin’ long over there. So I went after her.”
Sam turned down the trail. “She’s comin’ now, an’ I reckon it’ll be safer for me to run along till you cheer her up,” he said.
“Take my horse with you, Sam, an’ turn him loose in the pasture,” rejoined Rich.
Cappy strained his eyes up the leafy trail.
“Wal, I see something,” he said at last. “But if it’s Nesta she’s comin’ awful slow.”
“Cap, she’s got an eye like a hawk. She sees me, an’ she’ll hang back till I go. . . . Old timer, I’d begun to fear you’d died or somethin’. Dog-gone, but I’m glad you’ve come!”
In these words and the wistfulness of his glance Rich Ames betrayed not only what he said but the fact that a half year had made him older and graver.
“You’ve had some trouble, Rich?”
“Shore have.”
“Somethin’ beside—Tommy’s death?”
“Reckon so.”
“Wal, what is it?”
“It’s aboot Nesta. An’ it’s got me plumb up a tree . . . . But, Cap, I want more time to tell you. So I’ll run along home while you meet Nesta.”
A bay pony emerged from the wall of green down the trail. Its rider was a bareheaded girl whose bonnet hung over her shoulders. She sat her saddle sideways. But when she neared the pine log where the trapper leaned watching, she partly turned. Then she sat up, startled. The petulant droop of her vanished and her red lips curled in a smile of surprise and delight. She slid off the saddle to confront him.
“Cappy Tanner! . . . So it was you Rich was talkin’ to?” she cried.
“Wal, Nesta, if it’s really you, I’m sayin’ howdy,” rejoined the trapper.
“It’s me, Cappy. . . . Have I changed so—so much?”
The beautiful blue-flashing eyes, so characteristic of the Ameses, met his only for a moment. It was the change in her and not the constraint that inhibited Tanner. Hardly more than six months ago she had been a slender, pale-faced girl, pretty with all the fairness of the family. And now she seemed a woman, strange to him, grown tall, full-bosomed, beautiful as one of the golden flowers of the valley. Cappy passed a reluctant gaze from her head to her feet, and back again. He had never seen her dressed becomingly like this. Her thick rich hair, so fair that it was almost silver, was parted in the middle above a low forehead just now marred by a little frown. Under level fine brows her eyes, sky-blue, yet full of fire, roved everywhere, refusing to concentrate upon her old friend. Any stranger who had ever seen Rich Ames would have recognized her as his twin sister, yet the softness of her face, its sweetness, its femininity were features singularly her own.
“Changed? Wal, lass, you are,” replied the old trapper, slowly, as he took her hands. “Growed into a woman! . . . Nesta, you’re the purtiest thing in all the Tonto.”
“Ah, Cappy, you haven’t changed,” she replied, suddenly gay and glad. And she kissed him, not with the old innocent freedom,
