Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/285

Rh He liked to watch the responsive flush on her face, the steady light in her eyes that looked so frankly into his for all her blushes.

"There is just one thing that is hard to determine," he went on, "and that is the amount of the supply that flows into Lake of the Woods. One thing we can do to assure water, and that is to afforest the bare slopes of Ghost Mountain and turn them into watershed. That is an extra that may not be necessary now but it is a very vital precaution. And it will all take money."

"We are going to be partners, aren't we, Peter? In everything?"

"In everything."

"Then please don't overlook my little fortune. I should like to put those dollars into trees. Not trees to be cut down, but to grow, to beckon the rain, to live their full lives of beauty and usefulness. Let that be my share, Peter."

The rider, bringing back the horses to the stream for water, broke his answer, roused Thora and Red. Thora's first thought was for Mary, even ahead of Red. She read Mary's eyes instantly before the question formed in her own.

"Oh," she said, "I bane so glad."

"We are going East in a few days, Thora," said Sheridan. "Do you want to come along?"

The clear tan of Thora's skin, from where her neck sprang out of her waist, up to the roots of her flaxen hair, became like the rim rock that Sheridan had noticed in the sunrise, and her clear woman's eyes clouded with a mist of girlish shyness.