While she is shading her eyes from the blinding glare of the orb of day, the aforesaid orb of day keeps right on setting, according to advertisement, and at last disappears behind the snowy range, lighting up, as it does so, the fleecy clouds and turning them into gold, figuratively speaking, making the picture one of surpassing lovliness. But what does she care for a $13.00 sunset, or the low, sad wail of the sage-hen far up the canon, as it calls to its mate? What does she care for the purple landscape and the mournful sigh of the new milch cow which is borne to her over the greet divide? She don't care a cent. CHAPTER II. |It is now the proper time to bring in the solitary horseman. He is seen riding a mouse-colored bronco on a smooth canter, and, from his uneasiness in the saddle, it is evident that he has been riding a long time, and that it doesn't agree with him. He has been attending the spring meeting of the Rocky Mountain Roundup. He takes a benevolent chew of tobacco, looks at his cylinder-escapement watch, and plunges his huge Mexican spurs into the panting sides of his bronco steed. The ambitious steed rears forward and starts away into the gathering gloom at the rate of twenty-one miles in twenty-one days, while a bitter oath escapes from the clenched teeth and foam-flecked lips of the pigeon-toed rider. But stay! Let us catch a rapid outline of the solitary horseman, for he is the affianced lover and soft-eyed gazelle of Luella Frowzletop, the queen of the Skimmilk Ranche. He is evidently a man of say twenty summers, with a sinister expression to the large, ambitious, imported, Italian mouth. A broad-brimmed white hat with a scarlet flannel band protects his Gothic features from the burning sun, and a pale-brown ducking suit envelopes his lithe form. A horsehair lariat hangs at his saddle bow, and the faint suspicion of a downy mustache on his chiselled upper lip is just beginning to ooze out into the air, as if ashamed of itself. It is one of those sickly mustaches, a kind of cross between blonde and brindle, which mean well enough, but never amount to anything. His eyes are fierce and restless, with short, expressive, white eyelashes, and his nose is short but wide out, gradually melting away into his bronzed and stalwart cheeks, like a dish of ice-cream before a Sabbath school picnic. Such is the rough sketch of Pigeon-toed Pete, the swain who had stolen away the heart of Luella Frowzletop, the queen of the Skimmilk Ranche. He isn't handsome, but he is very good, and he loves the fair Luella with a great deal of diligence, although her parents are averse to the match, for we might as well inform the sagacious and handsome reader that her parents are Presbyterians, whereas the hero of this blood-curdling tale is a hard-shell Baptist. Thus are two hearts doomed to love in vain. CHAPTER III.