“You know,” he began, “you’re like as if I had been trying to think of a word I wanted to say—some fine, big word, a fancy one—but I couldn’t think of it. You know how you can’t think of the one you want sometimes, only nothing else will do in place of it, and then all at once, when you quit trying to think, it flashes over you. You’re like that. I never could think of you, but I just had to because I couldn’t get along without it, and then when I didn’t expect it you just happened along—the word came along and said itself.” Without speaking she had run ahead to pick the white and blue columbines and pink roses. And he, alarmed at his boldness, fearing she would now be afraid of him, went forward with the deep purpose of showing her a light, careless mood, to convince her that he had meant nothing much. To this end he told her lively anecdotes, chaste classics of the range calculated to amuse, until they reached the very door of home:—About the British sailor who, having drifted up the Sacramento valley, was lured to mount a cow-pony known to be hysterical; of how he had declared when they picked him up a moment later, “If I’d been aware of the gale I’d have lashed myself to the rigging.” Then about the other trusting tenderfoot who was directed to insist at the stable in Santa Fé that they give him a “bucking broncho;” who was promptly accommodated and speedily unseated with much flourish, to the wicked glee of those who had deceived him; and who, when he asked what the horse had done and was told that he had “bucked,” had thereupon declared gratefully, “Did he only buck? It’s a God’s mercy he didn’t _broncho_ too, or he’d have killed me!” From this he drifted into the anecdote of old Chief Chew-feather, who became drunk one day and made a nuisance of himself in the streets of Atchison; how he had been driven out of town by Marshal Ed Lanigan, who, mounting his pony, chased him a mile or so, meantime emptying both his six-shooters at the fleeing brave by way of making the exact situation clear even to a clouded mind; and how the alarmed and sobered chief had ridden his own pony to a shadow, never drawing rein until he reached the encampment of his tribe at dusk, to report that “the whites had broken out at Atchison.” He noticed, however, that she was affected to even greater constraint of manner by these sallies, though he laughed heartily himself at each climax as he made it, determined to show her that he had meant absolutely nothing the moment before. He succeeded so little, that he resolved never again to be reckless, if she would only be her old self on the morrow. He would not even tell her, as he had meant to, that looking into her eyes was like looking off under the spruces, where it was dark and yet light.