Page:Edison Marshall--Shepherds of the wild.djvu/211

Rh nights. She had a businesslike, matter-of-fact way in going about her tasks that delighted the man past words. She was as clean and sweet and unspoiled as the mountain flowers that grew about her,—but wholly able to take care of herself. As she camped beside the flocks her pistol was always in reach of her hand. And the very ideas that Hugh so loved in her simply filled his nights with horror.

Of course it was ridiculous,—but the thoughts of lovers often are. And he did love her, with all the earnestness of his wakened being, with a growing, breathless love that seemed natural as living. The point was passed, long ago, wherein he could doubt that fact. And now he didn't even have self-wonder that he should have come to these mountain realms and loved a mountain girl. It seemed simply his own inevitable destiny.

And he was humble and fearful as a callow boy about the whole thing. Nothing of his herdsman's life would have been so amusing to the members of the Greenwood Club as this. For Hugh had known women in plenty; he had been an eligible in a circle where eligibles were scarce, and these clubmen thought that his last delusion in regard to them was gone. He had been husband-hunted,—and the deer that has been stalked by a cougar no longer sees beauty in the lights of its eyes! But now his old arrogance and sophistication had fallen away from