Page:BM Bower - Her Prairie Knight.djvu/72

 fell from his forehead and trailed in the clean water, and Beatrice felt oddly tempted to push it back where it belonged. Standing quietly watching his picturesque figure, she forgot, for the moment, that a little boy was lost among these peaceful, sun-bathed hills; she remembered only the man at her feet, drinking long, satisfying drafts, while the lock of hair floated in the spring.

"Now we'll go on." He stood up and pushed back the wet lock, which trickled a tiny stream down his cheek, and settled his gray hat in place.

Again that day he felt her foot in his palm, and the touch went over him in thrills. She was tired, he knew; her foot pressed heavier than it had before. He would have liked to take her in his arms and lift her bodily into the saddle, but he hardly dared think of such a blissful proceeding.

He set the pace slower, however, and avoided the steepest places, and he halted often on the higher ground, to scan sharply the coulées. And so they searched, these two, together, and grew to know each other better than in a month of casual meetings. And the grass nodded, and the winds laughed, and the stern hills looked on, quizzically silent. If they knew aught of a small boy with a wealth of 70