“No. You’re just the right age. I’ll tell you about her. There never was anybody prettier—not in Wyoming. She’s fresh and sweet, like those wild roses we picked in Bear Creek Cañon. Her eyes are kind o’ rippled by a laugh ’way down deep in them, then sometimes they are dark and still and—sort of tender. She has the kindest heart in the world—and the cruelest. I wouldn’t want a better partner, though she’s as wild as an unbroken bronc sometimes. You never can tell when she’s going to bolt.” There was a faint flush of pink in her cheeks, but her eyes danced. “You don’t make her sound like a really _nice_ girl.” “Oh, she’s nice enough, when she isn’t a little divvle. The trouble is she isn’t foot-loose.” “Of course she is tremendously in love with you.” “She likes me a heap better than she pretends.” “I’m sure she would adore you if she knew how modest you are,” Ruth answered with amiable malice. Silcott’s gaze absorbed her dainty sweetness. He spoke with an emphasis of the cattleman’s drawl. “I’d like right well to take her up on my hawss and ride away with her like that Lochinvar fellow did in the poetry book y’u lent me onct—the one that busted up the wedding of the laggard guy and went a-fannin’ off with his gyurl behind him, whilst the no’count bridegroom and her paw hollered ‘Help!’” “Lochinvar. Oh, he’s out of date.” “Maybe so. But it’s a great thing to know when to butt in.” He watched her covertly as he spoke. “And when not to,” added Ruth, with the insolent little tilt of her chin that made men want to demonstrate. “Come on. Let’s go over to the mesa and look at the desert in the moonlight.” Beneath the stars this land of splintered peaks and ragged escarpments always took on a glory denied to it by day. The obscuration of detail, the vagueness of outline, lent magic to the hills. Below, the valley swam in a sheen of gleaming silver. Ruth drew a deep breath of sensuous delight and lifted her face to the star-strewn sky. Her companion watched her, his eyes shining. She was standing lance straight, everything forgotten but the beauty of the night. In the air was a faint, murmurous stir of desert denizens. “The world’s going to bed,” she whispered. “It always says its prayers first—wonderful prayers full of the fragrance of roses and the sough of wind just touching the pines, and the far, far song of birds. You have to listen—oh, so still!—before you can hear them. The world is sad because the lovely day is dead and because life is so short and so filled with loss, and it’s just a wee bit afraid of the darkness. So God lights up millions of candles in His sky as a sign that He’s up there and all’s well with the universe.”