tell me she plays the piano!”
Nash laughed. “She does; but it’s one of those you operate with your feet.”
“I’m relieved to hear that. She seems almost weirdly gifted as it is.” After a moment he broke in with: “What can a man do in this town?”
“Work, nothing else.”
“What do you do for amusement?”
“Once in a while there is a dance in the hall over the drug-store, and on Sunday you can listen to a wretched sermon in the log church. The rest of the time you work or loaf in the saloons – or read. Old Nature has done her part here. But man – ! Ever been in the Tyrol?”
“Yes.”
“Well, some day the people of the plains will have sense enough to use these mountains, these streams, the way they do over there.”
It required only a few hours for Norcross to size up the valley and its people. Aside from Nash and his associates, and one or two families connected with the mill to the north, the villagers were poor, thriftless, and uninteresting. They were lacking in the picturesque quality of ranchers and miners, and had not yet the grace of town-dwellers. They were, indeed, depressingly nondescript.
Early on the second morning he went to the post-office – which was also the telephone station – to get a letter or message from Meeker. He found neither; but as he was standing in the door undecided about taking the stage, Berea came into town riding a fine bay pony, and leading a blaze-face buckskin behind her.
Her face shone cordially, as she called out: “Well, how do you stack up this morning?”
“Tip-top,” he answered, in an attempt to match her cheery greeting.
“Do you like our town better?”
“Not a bit! But the hills are magnificent.”
“Anybody turned up from the mill?”
“No, I haven’t heard a word from there. The telephone is still out of commission.”
“They can’t locate the break. Uncle Joe sent word by the stage-driver asking us to keep an eye out for you and send you over. I’ve come to take you over myself.”
“That’s mighty good of you; but it’s a good deal to ask.”
“I want to see Uncle Joe on business, anyhow, and you’ll like the ride better than the journey by stage.”
Leaving the horses standing with their bridle-reins hanging on the ground, she led the way to the office.
“When father comes in, tell him where I’ve gone, and send Mr. Norcross’s packs by the first wagon. Is your outfit ready?” she asked.
“Not quite. I can get it ready soon.”
He hurried away in pleasant excitement, and in twenty minutes was at the door ready to ride.
“You’d better take my bay,” said Berea. “Old Paint-face there is a little notional.”
Norcross approached his mount with a caution which indicated that he had at least been instructed in range-horse psychology, and as he gathered his reins together to mount, Berrie remarked:
“I hope you’re saddle-wise.”
“I had a few lessons in a riding-school,” he replied, modestly.
Young Downing approached the girl with a low-voiced protest: “You oughtn’t to ride old Paint. He nearly pitched the Supervisor the other day.”
“I’m not worried,” she said, and swung to her saddle.
The ugly beast made off in a tearing sidewise rush, but she smilingly called back: “All set.” And Norcross followed her in high admiration.
Eventually she brought her bronco to subjection, and they trotted off together along the wagon-road quite comfortably. By this time the youth had forgotten his depression, his homesickness of the morning. The valley was again enchanted ground. Its vistas led to lofty heights. The air was regenerative, and though a part of this elation was due, no doubt, to the power of his singularly attractive guide, he laid it discreetly to the climate.
After shacking along between some rather sorry fields of grain for a mile or two, Berea swung into a side-trail. “I want you to meet my mother,” she said.
The grassy road led to a long, one-story, half-log, half-slab house, which stood on the bank of a small, swift, willow-bordered stream.
“This is our ranch,” she explained. “All the meadow in sight belongs to us.”
The young Easterner looked about in astonishment. Not a tree bigger than his thumb gave shade. The gate of the cattle corral stood but a few feet from the kitchen door, and rusty beef-bones, bleaching skulls, and scraps of sun-dried hides littered the ground or hung upon the fence. Exteriorly the low cabin made a drab, depressing picture; but as he alighted – upon Berea’s invitation – and entered the house, he was met by a sweet-faced, brown-haired little woman in a neat gown, whose bearing was not in the least awkward or embarrassed.
“This is Mr. Norcross, the tourist I told you about,” explained Berrie.
Mrs. McFarlane extended her small hand with friendly impulse. “I’m very glad to meet you, sir. Are you going to spend some time at the Mill?”
“I don’t know. I have a letter to Mr. Meeker from a friend of mine who hunted with him last year – a Mr. Sutler.”
“Mr. Sutler! Oh, we know him very well. Won’t you sit down?”
The interior of the house was not only well kept, but presented many evidences of refinement. A mechanical piano stood against the log wall, and books and magazines, dog-eared with use, littered the table; and Norcross, feeling the force of Nash’s half-expressed criticism of his “superior,” listened intently to Mrs. McFarlane’s apologies for the condition of the farmyard.
“Well,” said Berea, sharply, “if we’re to reach Uncle Joe’s for dinner we’d better be scratching the hills.” And to her mother she added: “I’ll pull in about dark.”
The mother offered no objection to her daughter’s plan, and the young people rode off together directly toward the high peaks to the east.
“I’m going by way of the cut-off,” Berrie explained; and Norcross, content and unafraid, nodded in acquiescence. “Here is the line,” she called a few minutes later, pointing at a sign nailed to a tree at the foot of the first wooded hill.
The notice, printed in black ink on a white square of cloth, proclaimed this to be the boundary of the Bear Tooth National Forest, and pleaded with all men to be watchful of fires. Its tone was not at all that of a strong government; it was deprecatory.
The trail, hardly more than a wood road, grew wilder and lonelier as they climbed. Cattle fed on the hillsides in scattered bands like elk. Here and there a small cabin stood on the bank of a stream; but, for the most part, the trail mounted the high slopes in perfect solitude.
The girl talked easily and leisurely, reading the brands of the ranchers, revealing the number of cattle they owned, quite as a young farmer would have
