The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old WestWilson, Harry Leon
General
The Lions of the Lord: A Tale of the Old West
Wilson, Harry Leon
Historical fiction; Latter Day Saint pioneers -- Fiction; Western stories
From a high, tented wagon in one such train, creaking its rough way
down Emigration Cañon, with straining oxen and tired but eager people,
there had leaped one late afternoon the girl whose eyes were to call to
him so potently,—incomparable eyes, large and deep, of a velvety
grayness, under black brows splendidly bent. Nor had the eyes alone
voiced that call to his starved senses. He had caught the free,
fearless confidence of her leap over the wheel, and her graceful
abandon as she stood there, finely erect and full-curved, her head with
its Greek lines thrown well back, and her strong hands raised to
readjust the dusky hair that tumbled about her head like a storm-cloud.
Men from the train were all about, and others from the settlement, and
these spoke to her, some in serious greeting, some with jesting words.
She returned it all in good part without embarrassment,—even the sally
of the winking wag who called out, “Now then, Mara Cavan! Here we are,
and a girl like yourself ought to catch an Elder, at the very lowest.”
She laughed with easy good-nature, still fumbling in the dusk of blown
hair at the back of her head, showing a full-lipped mouth, beautifully
large, with strong-looking, white teeth. “I’ll catch never a one
myself, if you please, Nathan Tanner! I’ll do no catching at _all_,
now! _I’m_ the one will have to be caught!”
Her voice was a contralto, with the little hint of roughness that made
it warm and richly golden; that made it fall, indeed, upon the ears of
the listening Elder like a cathedral chime calling him to forget all
and worship—forget all but that he was five and twenty with the hot
blood surging and crowding and crying out in his veins.
Now, having a little subdued the tossing storm-cloud of hair, she stood
with one hand upon her hip and the other shading her eyes, looking
intently into the streets of the new settlement. And again there was
bantering jest from the men about, and the ready, careless response
from her, with gestures of an impishly reckless unconcern, of a full
readiness to give and take in easy good-fellowship. But then, in the
very midst of a light response to one of the bantering men, her gray
eyes met for the first time the very living look of the young Elder
standing near. She was at once confused, breaking off her speech with
an awkward laugh, and looking down. But, his eyes keeping steadily upon
her, she, as if defiantly, returned his look for a fluttering second,
trying to make her eyes survey him slowly from head to foot with her
late cool carelessness; but she had to let them fall again, and he saw
the colour come under the clear skin.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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