Page:J Allan Dunn--The Girl of Ghost Mountain.djvu/64

46 socialist. He had found that what one man might lack in one capacity, he was apt to make up in other things that count. The main thing was to be a man. He found Jackson congenial enough. The cowpuncher had his philosophies, his codes, and they were none the less effective and invigorating for having been acquired without instruction. But, from a woman, Sheridan felt that his spirit demanded something more for true companionship.

A woman, he believed, should be able to furnish aspiration and inspiration to a man, to prevent him from coarsening, to polish what he rough-hewed from life. That is, a woman that a man might take for mate. He checked his thoughts at this. There seemed no reason why they should lead to such a close connection with a girl whom he had never seen, save at long distance. This ride was merely a man's duty. Jackson felt the urge as keenly as himself; any of the cowboys of the Circle S would have instinctively done the same thing. But he found he was regarding this nameless girl as a special individual, not merely as a woman likely to be insulted. And he was quite aware that he was not thinking of her companion at all.

Yet the answer was simple enough. It is hard for a man to judge his own composite. Sheridan was far from being an anchorite. The physical as well as the mental side of him desired to see this girl who said "mounting" for mountain; this "slimsy lady" of Jackson's phrase. The description stuck with him, suggested the need for his aid more keenly, fired his purpose. And she was from his own people.