The Mysterious Rider Read Free Page A

sweetness steady that damned pup! My Heavens! He was a gambler and a drunkard. He-"
    "Hush!" implored Columbine.
    "He cheated at cards," declared the cowboy, with a scorn that placed that vice as utterly base.
    "But Jack was only a wild boy," replied Columbine, trying with brave words to champion the son of the man she loved as her father. "He has been sent away to work. He'll have outgrown that wildness. He'll come home a man."
    "Bah!" cried Moore, harshly.
    Columbine felt a sinking within her. Where was her strength? She, who could walk and ride so many miles, to become sick with an inward quaking! It was childish. She struggled to hide her weakness from him.
    "It's not like you to be this way," she said. "You used to be generous. Am I to blame? Did I choose my life?"
    Moore looked quickly away from her, and, standing with a hand on his horse, he was silent for a moment. The squaring of his shoulders bore testimony to his thought. Presently he swung up into the saddle. The mustang snorted and champed the bit and tossed his head, ready to bolt.
    "Forget my temper," begged the cowboy, looking down upon Columbine. "I take it all back. I'm sorry. Don't let a word of mine worry you. I was only jealous."
    "Jealous!" exclaimed Columbine, wonderingly.
    "Yes. That makes a fellow see red and green. Bad medicine! You never felt it."
    "What were you jealous of?" asked Columbine.
    The cowboy had himself in hand now and he regarded her with a grim amusement.
    "Well, Columbine, it's like a story," he replied. "I'm the fellow disowned by his family-a wanderer of the wilds-no good-and no prospects.... Now our friend Jack, he's handsome and rich. He has a doting old dad. Cattle, horses-ranches! He wins the girl. See!"
    Spurring his mustang, the cowboy rode away. At the edge of the slope he turned in the saddle. "I've got to drive in this bunch of cattle. It's late. You hurry home." Then he was gone. The stones cracked and rolled down under the side of the bluff.
    Columbine stood where he had left her: dubious, yet with the blood still hot in her cheeks.
    "Jealous?... He wins the girl?" she murmured in repetition to herself. "What ever could he have meant? He didn't mean-he didn't-"
    The simple, logical interpretation of Wilson's words opened Columbine's mind to a disturbing possibility of which she had never dreamed. That he might love her! If he did, why had he not said so? Jealous, maybe, but he did not love her! The next throb of thought was like a knock at a door of her heart-a door never yet opened, inside which seemed a mystery of feeling, of hope, despair, unknown longing, and clamorous voices. The woman just born in her, instinctive and self-preservative, shut that door before she had more than a glimpse inside. But then she felt her heart swell with its nameless burdens.
    Pronto was grazing near at hand. She caught him and mounted. It struck her then that her hands were numb with cold. The wind had ceased fluttering the aspens, but the yellow leaves were falling, rustling. Out on the brow of the slope she faced home and the west.
    A glorious Colorado sunset had just reached the wonderful height of its color and transformation. The sage slopes below her seemed rosy velvet; the golden aspens on the farther reaches were on fire at the tips; the foothills rolled clear and mellow and rich in the light; the gulf of distance on to the great black range was veiled in mountain purple; and the dim peaks beyond the range stood up, sunset-flushed and grand. The narrow belt of blue sky between crags and clouds was like a river full of fleecy sails and wisps of silver. Above towered a pall of dark cloud, full of the shades of approaching night.
    "Oh, beautiful!" breathed the girl, with all her worship of nature. That wild world of sunset grandeur and loneliness and beauty was hers. Over there, under a peak of the black range, was the place where she had been found, a baby, lost in the forest. She belonged to that, and so it belonged to her.