The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of ColoradoBrady, Cyrus Townsend
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The Chalice Of Courage: A Romance of Colorado
Brady, Cyrus Townsend
Colorado -- Fiction; Love stories; Western stories
She was gloriously beautiful, too; even her brief experience in the west
had brought back the missing roses to her cheek, and had banished the
bister circles from beneath her eyes. Robert Maitland, lazily reclining
propped up against a boulder, his feet to the fire, smoking an old pipe
that would have given his brother the horrors, looked with approving
complacency upon her, confident and satisfied that his prescription was
working well. Nor was he the only one who looked at her that way. Marion
and Emma, his two daughters, worshiped their handsome Philadelphia
cousin and they sat one on either side of her on the great log lying
between the tents and the fire. Even Bob junior condescended to give her
approving glances. The whole camp was at her feet. Mrs. Maitland had
been greatly taken by her young niece. Kirkby made no secret of his
devotion; Arthur Bradshaw and Henry Phillips, each a "tenderfoot" of the
extremest character, friends of business connections in the east, who
were spending their vacation with Maitland, shared in the general
devotion; to say nothing of George the cook, and Pete, the packer and
"horse wrangler."
Phillips, who was an old acquaintance of Enid's, had tried his luck with
her back east and had sense enough to accept as final his failure.
Bradshaw was a solemn young man without that keen sense of humor which
was characteristic of the west. The others were suitably dressed for
adventure, but Bradshaw's idea of an appropriate costume was
distinguished chiefly by long green felt puttees which swathed his huge
calves and excited curious inquiry and ribald comment from the surprised
denizens of each mountain hamlet through which they had passed, to all
of which Bradshaw remained serenely oblivious. The young man, who does
not enter especially into this tale, was a vestryman of the church in
his home in the suburbs of Philadelphia. His piety had been put to a
severe strain in the mountains.
That day everybody had to work on the trail--everybody wanted to for
that matter. The hardest labor consisted in the driving of the burros.
Unfortunately there was no good and trained leader among them through an
unavoidable mischance, and the campers had great difficulty in keeping
the burros on the trail. To Arthur Bradshaw had been allotted the most
obstinate, cross-grained and determined of the unruly band, and old
Kirkby and George paid particular attention to instructing him in the
gentle art of manipulating him over the rocky mountain trail.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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