Her Prairie Knight, Lonesome Land & The Uphill Climb: Complete Western Trilogy. B. M. Bower
doing things by rule, I tell you. I couldn’t care for you because you were good to me, and I ought to care; it must be because I can’t help myself. And I—” She stopped and shut her teeth hard together; she felt sure she should cry in another minute if this went on.
“I believe you do love me, Beatrice, and your rebellious young American nature dreads surrender.” He tried to look into her eyes and smile, but she kept her eyes looking straight ahead. Then Sir Redmond made the biggest blunder of his life, out of the goodness of his heart, and because he hated to tease her into promising anything.
“I won’t ask you to tell me now, Beatrice,” he said gently. “I want you to be sure; I never could forgive myself if you ever felt you had made a mistake. A week from to-night I shall ask you once more—and it will be for the last time. After that—But I won’t think—I daren’t think what it would be like if you say no. Will you tell me then, Beatrice?”
The heart of Beatrice jumped into her throat. At that minute she was very near to saying yes, and having done with it. She was quite sure she knew, then, what her answer would be in a week. The smile she gave him started Sir Redmond’s blood to racing exultantly. Her lips parted a little, as if a word were there, ready to be spoken; but she caught herself back from the decision. Sir Redmond had voluntarily given her a week; well, then, she would take it, to the last minute.
“Yes, I’ll tell you a week from to-night, after dinner. I’ll race you home, Sir Redmond—the first one through the big gate by the stable wins!” She struck Rex a blow that made him jump, and darted off down the trail that led home, and her teasing laugh was the last Sir Redmond heard of her that day; for she whipped into a narrow gulch when the first turn hid her from him, and waited until he had thundered by. After that she rode complacently, deep into the hills, wickedly pleased at the trick she had played him.
Every day during the week that followed she slipped away from him and rode away by herself, resolved to enjoy her freedom to the full while she had it; for after that, she felt, things would never be quite the same.
Every day, when Dick had chance for a quiet word with her, he wanted to know who owned Rex—till at last she lost her temper and told him plainly that, in her opinion, Keith Cameron had left the country for two reasons, instead of one. (For Keith, be it known, had not been seen since the day he passed her and Sir Redmond on the trail.) Beatrice averred that she had a poor opinion of a man who would not stay and face whatever was coming.
There was just one day left in her week of freedom, and Dick still owned Rex, with the chances all in his favor for continuing to do so. Still, Beatrice was vindictively determined upon one point. Let Keith Cameron cross her path, and she would do something she had never done before; she would deliberately lead him on to propose—if the fellow had nerve enough to do so, which, she told Dick, she doubted.
Chapter 12. Held Up by Mr. Kelly
“‘Traveler, what lies over the hill?’” questioned a mischievous voice.
Keith, dreaming along a winding, rock-strewn trail in the canyon, looked up quickly and beheld his Heart’s Desire sitting calmly upon her horse, ten feet before Redcloud’s nose, watching him amusedly. Redcloud must have been dreaming also, or he would have whinnied warning and welcome, with the same breath.
“‘Traveler, tell to me,’” she went on, seeing Keith only stared.
Keith, not to be outdone, searched his memory hurriedly for the reply which should rightly follow; secretly he was amazed at her sudden friendliness.
“‘Child, there’s a valley over there’—but it isn’t ‘pretty and wooded and shy’—not what you can notice. And there isn’t any ‘little town,’ either, unless you go a long way. Why?” Keith rested his gloved hands, one above the other, on the saddle horn, and let his eyes riot with the love that was in him. He had not seen his Heart’s Desire for a week. A week? It seemed a thousand years! And here she was before him, unusually gracious.
“Why? I discovered that hill two hours ago, it seems to me, and it wasn’t more than a mile off. I want to see what lies on the other side. I feel sure no man ever stood upon the top and looked down. It is my hill—mine by the right of discovery. But I’ve been going, and going, and I think it’s rather farther away, if anything, than it was before.”
“Good thing I met you’” Keith declared, and he looked as if he meant it. “You’re probably lost, right now, and don’t know it. Which way is home?”
Beatrice smiled a superior smile, and pointed.
“I thought so,” grinned Keith joyously. “You’re pointing straight toward Claggett.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Beatrice, “since you know, and you’re here. The important thing is to get to the top of that hill.”
“What for?” Keith questioned.
“Why, to be there!” Beatrice opened her big eyes at him. “That,” she declared whimsically, “is the top of the world, and it is mine. I found it. I want to go up there and look down.”
“It’s an unmerciful climb,” Keith demurred hypocritically, to strengthen her resolution.
“All the better. I don’t value what comes easily.”
“You won’t see anything, except more hills.”
“I love hills—and more hills.”
“You’re a long way from home, and it’s after one o’clock.”
“I have a lunch with me, and I often stay out until dinner time.”
Keith gave a sigh that shook the saddle, making up, in volume, what it lacked in sincerity. The blood in him was a-jump at the prospect of leading his Heart’s Desire up next the clouds—up where the world was yet young. A man in love is fond of self-torture.
“I have not said you must go.” Beatrice answered with the sigh.
“You don’t have to,” he retorted. “It is a self evident fact. Who wants to go prowling around these hills by night, with a lantern that smokes an’ has an evil smell, losing sleep and yowling like a bunch of coyotes, hunting a misguided young woman who thinks north is south, and can’t point straight up?”
“You draw a flattering picture, Mr. Cameron.”
“It’s realistic. Do you still insist upon getting up there, for the doubtful pleasure of looking down?” Secretly, he hoped so.
“Certainly.”
“Then I shall go with you.”
“You need not. I can go very well by myself, Mr. Cameron.”
Beatrice was something of a hypocrite herself.
“I shall go where duty points the way.”
“I hope it points toward home, then.”
“It doesn’t, though. It takes the trail you take.”
“I never yet allowed my wishes to masquerade as Disagreeable Duty, with two big D’s,” she told him tartly, and started off.
“Say! If you’re going up that hill, this is the trail. You’ll bump up against a straight cliff if you follow that path.”
Beatrice turned with seeming reluctance and allowed him to guide her, just as she had intended he should do.
“Dick tells me you have been away,” she began suavely.
“Yes. I’ve just got back from Fort Belknap,” he explained quietly, though he must have known his absence had been construed differently. “I’ve rented pasturage on the reservation for every hoof I own. Great grass over there—the whole prairie like a hay meadow, almost, and little streams everywhere.”