30,000 On the Hoof Read Free Page B

his satisfaction and gladness glowed into something strange and perturbing. The fact of her coming to marry him grew real; he must try to think of that as well as the numberless things important towards the future of his ranch.
    The next day, Saturday, saw Huett labour strenuous hours between daylight and dark. Sunday at the blacksmith's he packed and helped his friend rig a canvas cover over the wagon. This would keep the contents dry and serve as a place to sleep during the way down. Monday, finding he still had a couple of hundred dollars left, Logan bought horse and saddle, some tinned goods, and dried fruits, a small medicine-case, some smoking tobacco, and last a large box of candy for his prospective bride.
    This present bought him to the very necessary consideration of how and where he could be married. Here the blacksmith again came to his assistance. There was a parson in town who would "hitch you up pronto for a five-dollar gold piece!"
    Two overland trains rolled in from the East every day, the first arriving at eight-thirty in the morning, and the second at ten in the evening.. On board one of these to-day would be Lucinda Baker.
    "Hope she comes on the early one," said Logan aloud, when he presented himself at the station far ahead of time. "We can get the 'hitch pronto,' as Hardy calls it, and be off to-day."
    It did not take Logan long to discover that the most important daily event in Flagg was the arrival of this morning train. The platform might have been a promenade, to the annoyance of the railroad men. Logan leaned against the hitching-rail and waited. Obstreperous cowboys clanked along with their awkward stride, ogling the girls. Mexicans, with blanketed shoulders, lounged about, their sloe-black eyes watchful, while handsome Navajo braves, with colourful bands around their heads, padded to and fro with their moccasined tread. Lucinda would be much impressed by them, thought Logan.
    The train whistled from around the pine-forested bend. Logan felt a queer palpitation that he excused as unusual eagerness and gladness. Small wonder--a fellow's bride came only once!
    Presently Logan saw the dusty brown train, like a long, scaly snake coiling behind a puffing black head, come into sight to straighten out and rapidly draw near. The engine passed with a steaming roar. Logan counted the cars. Then with a grinding of steel on steel the train come to a halt.

    Chapter TWO .
    Lucinda Baker's dreams of romance and adventure had been secrets no one had ever guessed; but none of them had ever transcended this actual journey of hers to the far West to become the wife of her girlhood sweetheart. Yet it seemed she had been preparing for some incredible adventure ever since Logan had left Independence. How else could she account for having become a school teacher at sixteen, working through the long vacations, her strong application to household duties? She had always known that Logan Huett would never return home again, and that the great unknown West had claimed him. For this reason, if any, she had been training herself to become a pioneer's wife.
    She was thrillingly happy. She had left her family well and comfortable.
    She was inexpressibly glad to be away from persistent suitors. She was free to be herself--the half-savage, yearning creature she knew under her skin. Steady, plodding, dutiful, unsentimental Lucinda Baker was relegated to the past.
    Kansas in autumn was one vast, seared, rolling prairie, dotted with hamlets and towns along the steel highway. Lucinda grew tired watching the endless roll and stretch of barren land. She interested herself in her fellow-passengers and their children, all simple middle-class people like herself, journeying West to take up that beckoning life of the ranges. But what she saw of Colorado before dark, the grey, swelling slopes towards the heave and bulk of dim mountains, gave her an uneasy, awesome premonition of a fearful wildness and ruggedness of Nature much different from