looked blank. “I don’t believe I brought any. I’ve a leather shooting-jacket, however.”
She shrugged her shoulders and looked up at the sky. “We’re in for a storm. You’d ought ’o have a slicker, no fancy ‘raincoat,’ but a real old-fashioned cow-puncher’s oilskin. They make a business of shedding rain. Leather’s no good, neither is canvas; I’ve tried ’em all.”
She rode on for a few minutes in silence, as if disgusted with his folly, but she was really worrying about him. “Poor chap,” she said to herself. “He can’t stand a chill. I ought to have thought of his slicker myself. He’s helpless as a baby.”
They were climbing fast now, winding upward along the bank of a stream, and the sky had grown suddenly gray, and the woodland path was dark and chill. The mountains were not less beautiful; but they were decidedly less amiable, and the youth shivered, casting an apprehensive eye at the thickening clouds.
Berea perceived something of his dismay, and, drawing rein, dismounted. Behind her saddle was a tightly rolled bundle which, being untied and shaken out, proved to be a horseman’s rainproof oilskin coat. “Put this on!” she commanded.
“Oh no,” he protested, “I can’t take your coat.”
“Yes you can! You must! Don’t you worry about me, I’m used to weather. Put this on over your jacket and all. You’ll need it. Rain won’t hurt me; but it will just about finish you.”
The worst of this lay in its truth, and Norcross lost all his pride of sex for the moment. A wetting would not dim this girl’s splendid color, nor reduce her vitality one degree, while to him it might be a death-warrant. “You could throw me over my own horse,” he admitted, in a kind of bitter admiration, and slipped the coat on, shivering with cold as he did so.
“You think me a poor excuse of a trailer, don’t you?” he said, ruefully, as the thunder began to roll.
“You’ve got to be all made over new,” she replied, tolerantly. “Stay here a year and you’ll be able to stand anything.”
Remounting, she again led the way with cheery cry. The rain came dashing down in fitful, misty streams; but she merely pulled the rim of her sombrero closer over her eyes, and rode steadily on, while he followed, plunged in gloom as cold and gray as the storm. The splitting crashes of thunder echoed from the high peaks like the voices of siege-guns, and the lightning stabbed here and there as though blindly seeking some hidden foe. Long veils of falling water twisted and trailed through the valleys with swishing roar.
“These mountain showers don’t last long,” the girl called back, her face shining like a rose. “We’ll get the sun in a few minutes.”
And so it turned out. In less than an hour they rode into the warm light again, and in spite of himself Norcross returned her smile, though he said: “I feel like a selfish fool. You are soaked.”
“Hardly wet through,” she reassured him. “My jacket and skirt turn water pretty well. I’ll be dry in a jiffy. It does a body good to be wet once in a while.”
The shame of his action remained; but a closer friendship was established, and as he took off the coat and handed it back to her, he again apologized. “I feel like a pig. I don’t see how I came to do it. The thunder and the chill scared me, that’s the truth of it. You hypnotized me into taking it. How wet you are!” he exclaimed, remorsefully. “You’ll surely take cold.”
“I never take cold,” she returned. “I’m used to all kinds of weather. Don’t you bother about me.”
Topping a low divide the youth caught a glimpse of the range to the southeast, which took his breath. “Isn’t that superb!” he exclaimed. “It’s like the shining roof of the world!”
“Yes, that’s the Continental Divide,” she confirmed, casually; but the lyrical note which he struck again reached her heart. The men she knew had so few words for the beautiful in life. She wondered whether this man’s illness had given him this refinement or whether it was native to his kind. “I’m glad he took my coat,” was her thought.
She pushed on down the slope, riding hard, but it was nearly two o’clock when they drew up at Meeker’s house, which was a long, low, stone structure built along the north side of the road. The place was distinguished not merely by its masonry, but also by its picket fence, which had once been whitewashed. Farm-wagons of various degrees of decay stood by the gate, and in the barn-yard plows and harrows – deeply buried by the weeds – were rusting forlornly away. A little farther up the stream the tall pipe of a sawmill rose above the firs.
A pack of dogs of all sizes and signs came clamoring to the fence, followed by a big, slovenly dressed, red-bearded man of sixty or thereabouts.
“Hello, Uncle Joe,” called the girl, in offhand boyish fashion. “How are you to-day?”
“Howdy, girl,” answered Meeker, gravely. “What brings you up here this time?”
She laughed. “Here’s a boarder who wants to learn how to raise cattle.”
Meeker’s face lightened. “I reckon you’re Mr. Norcross? I’m glad to see ye. Light off and make yourself to home. Turn your horses into the corral, the boys will feed ’em.”
“Am I in America?” Norcross asked himself, as he followed the slouchy old rancher into the unkempt yard. “This certainly is a long way from New Haven.”
Without ceremony Meeker led his guests directly into the dining-room, a long and rather narrow room, wherein a woman and six or seven roughly dressed young men were sitting at a rudely appointed table.
“Earth and seas!” exclaimed Mrs. Meeker. “Here’s Berrie, and I’ll bet that’s Sutler’s friend, our boarder.”
“That’s what, mother,” admitted her husband. “Berrie brought him up.”
“You’d ought ’o gone for him yourself, you big lump,” she retorted.
Mrs. Meeker, who was as big as her husband, greeted Norcross warmly, and made a place for him beside her own chair.
“Highst along there, boys, and give the company a chance,” she commanded, sharply. “Our dinner’s turrible late to-day.”
The boys – they were in reality full-grown cubs of eighteen or twenty – did as they were bid with much noise, chaffing Berrie with blunt humor. The table was covered with a red oil-cloth, and set with heavy blue-and-white china. The forks were two-tined, steel-pronged, and not very polished, and the food was of the simplest sort; but the girl seemed at home there – as she did everywhere – and was soon deep in a discussion of the price of beef, and whether it was advisable to ship now or wait a month.
Meeker read Sutler’s letter, which Norcross had handed him, and, after deliberation, remarked: “All right, we’ll do the best we can for you, Mr. Norcross; but we haven’t any fancy accommodations.”
“He don’t expect any,” replied Berrie. “What he needs is a little roughing it.”
“There’s plinty of that to be had,” said one of the herders, who sat below the salt. “’is the soft life I’m nadin’.”
“Pat’s strong on soft jobs,” said another; and Berea joined the laugh which followed this pointless joke. She appeared to be one of them, and it troubled Norcross
