The Angel of the Gila Part 6

After reading the letter, Esther sat absorbed in thought. The present had slipped away, and it seemed as though her spirit had absented itself from her body and gone on a far journey. She was aroused to a consciousness of the present by a quick step. In a moment Kenneth Hastings was before her; then, seated at her side.

"Well!" he began. "How fortunate I am! Here I was on my way to call on you to give you these flowers. I've been up on the mountains for them."

"What beautiful mountain asters!" was her response, her face lighting with pleasure. "How exquisite in color! And how kind of you!"

"Yes, they're lovely." He looked into her face with undisguised admiration. Something within her shrank from it.

Three weeks had now pa.s.sed since the meeting of Kenneth Hastings and Esther Bright. During this time, he had become an almost daily caller at Clayton Ranch. When he made apologies for the frequency of his calls, the Claytons always a.s.sured him of the pleasure his presence gave them, saying he was to them a younger brother, and as welcome.

It was evident to them that Kenneth's transformation had begun. John Clayton knew that important changes were taking place in his daily life; that all his social life was spent in their home; that he had ceased to enter a saloon; and that he had suddenly become fastidious about his toilet.

If Esther noted any changes in him, she did not express it. She was singularly reticent in regard to him.

At this moment, she sat listening to him as he told her of the mountain flora.

"Wait till you see the cactus blossoms in the spring and summer." He seemed very enthusiastic. "They make a glorious ma.s.s of color against the soft gray of the dry gra.s.s, or soil."

"I'd love to see them." She lifted the bunch of asters admiringly.

"I have some water colors of cacti I made a year ago. I'd like to show them to you, Miss Bright, if you are interested."

She a.s.sured him she was.

"I was out in the region of Colorado River a year ago. It is a wonderful region no white man has yet explored. Only the Indians know of its greatness. I have an idea that when that region is explored by some scientist, he will discover that canyon to be the greatest marvel of the world. What I saw was on a stupendous, magnificent scale."

"How it must have impressed you!"

"Wonderfully! I'll show you a sketch I made of a bit of what I found.

It may suggest the magnificence of the coloring to you."

"How did you happen to have sketching materials with you?"

"I agreed to write a series of articles for an English magazine, and wished ill.u.s.trations for one of the articles."

"How accomplished you are!" she exclaimed. "A mining engineer, a painter, an author--"

"Don't!" he protested, raising a deprecatory hand.

Having launched on the natural wonders of Arizona, he grew more and more eloquent, till Esther's imagination made a daring leap, and she looked down the gigantic gorge he pictured to her, over great acres of ma.s.sive rock formation, like the splendor of successive day-dawns hardened into stone, and saw gigantic forms chiseled by ages of erosion.

"Do you ride horseback, Miss Bright?" he asked, suddenly changing the conversation.

"I am sorry to say that I do not. I do not even know how to mount."

"Let me teach you to ride," he said, with sudden interest.

"You would find me an awkward pupil," she responded, rising.

"I am willing to wager that I should not. When may I have the pleasure of giving you the first lesson?"

"Any time convenient for you when I am not teaching." She began to gather up her flowers and hat.

Then and there, a day was set for the first lesson in horsemanship.

"Sit down, please," said Kenneth. "I want you to enlighten me. I am painfully dense."

She seated herself on the tree trunk again, saying as she did so:

"I had not observed any conspicuous signs of density on your part, Mr.

Hastings, save that you think I could be metamorphosed into a horsewoman. Some women are born to the saddle. I was not. I am not an Englishwoman, you see."

"But decidedly English," he retorted. "I wish you would tell me your story."

Her face flushed.

"I beg your pardon," he hastened to say. "I did not mean to be rude.

You interest me deeply. Anything you think or do, anything that has made you what you are, is of deep interest to me."

"There is nothing to tell," she said simply. "Just a few pages, with here and there an entry; a few birthdays; graduation from college; foreign travel; work in Gila; a life spent in companionship with a wonderfully lovely and lovable grandfather; work at his side, and life's history in the making. That is all."

"All?" he repeated. "But that is rich in suggestion. I have studied you almost exclusively for three weeks, and I know you."

She looked up. The expression in his eyes nettled her. Her spinal column stiffened.

"Indeed! Know a woman in three weeks! You do well, better than most of your s.e.x. Most men, I am told, find woman an unsolvable problem, and when they think they know her, they find they don't."

This was interesting to him. He liked the flash in her eye.

"Some life purpose brings you to Gila, to work so unselfishly for a lot of common, ignorant people."

"What is that to you?"

Her question sounded harsh in her own ears, and then she begged his pardon.

"No apology is necessary on your part," he said, changing from banter to a tone of seriousness. "My words roused your resentment. I am at fault. The coming of a delicately nurtured girl like you into such a place of degradation is like the coming of an angel of light down to the bottomless pit. I beg forgiveness for saying this; but, Miss Bright, a mining camp, in these days, is a hotbed of vice."

"All the more reason why people of intelligence and character should try to make the life here clean. I believe we can crowd out evil by cultivating the good."

"You are a decided optimist," he said; "and I, by force of circ.u.mstances, have become a confirmed pessimist."

"You will not continue to be a pessimist," she said, prophetically, seeing in her mind's eye what he would be in the years to come. "You will come to know deep human sympathy; you will believe in the possibility of better and better things for your fellows. You will use your strength, your intellect, your fine education, for the best service of the world about you."

Somehow that prophecy went home to him.

"By George!" he exclaimed, "you make a fellow feel he _must_ be just what you want him to be, and what he ought to be."

The man studied the woman before him, with deep and increasing interest. She possessed a strength, he was sure, of which no one in Gila had yet dreamed. He continued: