Page:Owen Wister - The Virginian.djvu/528

Rh horses wandered or lay down in their pasture. At length he said with half a sigh that perhaps they ought to go.

"Ought?" she repeated softly.

"If we are to get anywhere to-day," he answered.

"Need we get anywhere?" she asked.

Her question sent delight through him like a flood. "Then you do not want to move camp to-day?" said he.

She shook her head.

At this he laid down his rod and came and sat by her. "I am very glad we shall not go till to-morrow," he murmured.

"Not to-morrow," she said. "Nor next day. Nor any day until we must." And she stretched her hands out to the island and the stream exclaiming, "Nothing can surpass this!"

He took her in his arms. "You feel about it the way I do," he almost whispered. "I could not have hoped there'd be two of us to care so much."

Presently, while they remained without speaking by the pool, came a little wild animal swimming round the rock from above. It had not seen them, nor suspected their presence. They held themselves still, watching its alert head cross through the waves quickly and come down through the pool, and so swim to the other side. There it came out on a small stretch of sand, turned its gray head and its pointed black nose this way and that, never seeing them, and then rolled upon its back in the warm dry sand. After a minute of rolling, it got on its feet again, shook its fur, and trotted away.