The Rustler of Wind River Part 46

"Ambulance for me!" said he, in disgust of his slow mending.

"Be glad that it isn't--oh, I shouldn't say that!"

"I am," said he, nodding his slow, grave head.

"We'll have to say good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," said she, bustling around, or making a show of doing so to hide the tears which had sprung into her eyes at the thought that it might have been a different sort of conveyance coming to Alamito to take Alan Macdonald away.

"And to Alamito," said he, looking out into the frost-stricken garden with a tenderness in his eyes. "I shall always have a softness in my heart for Alamito, because it gave me you. That garden out there yielded me the dearest flower that any garden ever gave a man"--he took her hands, and folded them above his heart--"a flower with a soul in it to keep it alive forever."

She bowed her head as he spoke, as if receiving a benediction.

"I hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," she said, her voice trembling, "for she'll cry, and I'm afraid I'll cry, too."

"It will not be farewell, only _hasta luego_[A] we can a.s.sure her of that. We'll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is our _val paraiso_."

"Our valley of paradise," she nodded, her hands reaching up to his shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, "our home!"

His arm about her shoulders, he faced her to the window, and pointed to the hills, asleep now in their brown winter coat behind a clear film of smoky blue.

"I stood up there one evening, weighted down with guns and ammunition, hunting and hunted in the most desperate game I ever played," he said.

"The sun was low over this valley, and Alamito was a gleam of white among the autumn gold. I was tired, hungry, dusty, thirsty and sore, and my heart was all but dead in its case. That was after you had sent me away from the post, scorned and half despised."

"Don't rebuke me for that night now, Alan," she pleaded, turning her pained eyes to his. "I have suffered for my injustice."

"It wasn't injustice, it was discipline, and it was good for both of us. We must come to confidence through misunderstandings and false charges very frequently in this life. Never mind that; I was telling you about that evening on the side of the hill. I had been sitting with my back to a rock, watching the brush for Mark Thorn, but I was thinking more of you than of him. For he meant only death, and you were life. But I thought that I had lost you that day."

She drew nearer to him as they stood, in the unequivocal consolation of her presence, in the most comforting refutation of that sad hour's dark forebodings.

"I thought that, until I stood up and started down the slope to go my lone-handed way. The sun struck me in the face then, and it was yellow over the valley, and the wind was glad. I knew then, when I looked out over it, that it held something for me, that it was my country, and my home. The lines of gray old Joaquin Miller came to me, and lifted my heart in a new vision. I said them over to myself:

Lo! these are the isles of the watery miles That G.o.d let down from the firmament.

Lo! Duty and Love, and a true man's trust; Your forehead to G.o.d and your feet in the dust--

only, there were two lines which I did not repeat, I dared not repeat, even in my heart. My vision halted short of their fulfillment."

"What are the words--do you remember them?" she asked.

"Yes; I can repeat them now, for my vision is broader, it is a better dream:

Lo! Duty and Love, and a sweet babe's smiles, And there, O friend, are the Fortunate Isles."

He pressed her closer, and kissed her hair. They stood, unmindful of the waiting ambulance, their vision fusing in the blue distances of the land their hearts held dear. It was home.

"Come on, Alan"--she started from her reverie and drew him by the hand--"there's Mrs. Chadron on the porch, waiting for _hasta luego_."

"For _hasta luego_," said he.

[A] For a little while.