Pardner,I sure am glad to see you--put 'er there again!How are you feeling,anyhow?Look mighty tough and wiry,I do say;Here,Bill!Willock raised his voice to a powerful shout,Bill!come and see what's blowed in with the tumbleweed and tickle-grass.A sure-enough man,that's what I call him,and me to fight if any dispute's made to the title,according.
The tall bronzed man who was leading his horse along the road entering the mountain horseshoe,smiled with a touch of gravity in the light of his gray eyes.Willock found his chin more resolute,his glance more assured and penetrating,while his step,firm and alert,told of dauntless purpose.He was no longer the wandering cowboy content with a bed on the ground wherever chance might find him at night,but a mature man who had taken root in the soil of his own acres.Only twenty-five or six,his features were still touched with the last lingering mobility of youth;but the set of his mouth and the gleam of his eyes hinted at years of battle against storms,droughts and loneliness.He was already a veteran of the prairie,despite his youth.
Everything looks very natural!murmured Wilfred Compton,gazing about on the seamed walls of granite in whose crevices the bright cedars mocked at winter's threatening hand.
Yes,mountains is lots more natural than humans.They just sets there serene and indifferent not caring whether you likes their looks or not,and they let 'er blow and let 'er snow,it's all one to them.I reckon when we've been dead so long that nobody could raise a dispute as to whether we'd ever lived or not,that there same boulder what they calls Rocking Stone will still be a-making up its mind whether to roll down into the valley or stay where it was born.Wilfred,if you knowed how glad I am to see you again,you'd be sort of scared,I reckon,thinking you'd fell amongst cannibals.Wonder where that aged trapper is?He shouted more lustily,and a bristling white head suddenly appeared on the summit of Turtle Hill.Great Scott!yelled Bill Atkins,glaring down upon the approaching figure,if it ain't Wilfred Compton again!Come on,come on,I was never as glad to see anybody in all my life!
The young man looked at Willock somewhat dubiously.He's very much altered,then,since I met him last.I'm afraid he has a gun hidden up there among the rocks.
Oh,nux,nux,retorted Willock.He's a-speaking fair.Come along!
As they ascended the winding road,Wilfred vividly recalled the day when,from the same elevation,he had watched Lahoma buried in her day-dreams.A sudden turn brought the cove into view.Lahoma was not to be seen,but there was the cabin,the dugout and the three cedar trees in whose shade he had made the discovery that he could not regard Lahoma as a little girl.It seemed that the cabin door trembled--was Lahoma's hand upon the latch?And when she opened the door,what expression would flash upon that face he remembered so well?Would she be as glad as Willock and Bill Atkins,when she recognized him?Even one half as glad?
He sighed deeply--it was not to be expected.She had known him only an hour;since then,many settlers had invaded the country about the Granite Mountains,a city had sprung up,not far away--other towns were peeping through the sand,and blooming from canvas to wood and brick.The air tingled with the electric currents of new life and intense competition.
Did Lahoma marry?he asked abruptly as all three descended to the lower level of the cove.
She never did,yet,replied Bill dryly.Young man,I'm powerful glad to see you.It's rather chilly out here.I'll take your horse and we'll gather in the dugout and talk over what's happened since we last met.Brick,don't you begin on anything interesting till I come.
You give me that horse,retorted Brick.You're too aged a man to be messing with horses.You'll get a fall one of these days that'll lay you flat.You'll never knit them bones together,if you do;you ain't vital enough.
Bill clung grimly to the bridle,muttering something that showed no lack of vitality in his vocabulary.
He won't let me take no care of him,complained Brick,as he conducted Wilfred to the dugout.
Wilfred cast a longing glance toward the cabin,and again he thought Lahoma's parlor door quivered.He even stopped in the path;but Willock went on,unconscious,and he was obliged to follow.
