Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/73

 "Right here. Why? doesn't it look old enough for that?"

"You'll not joke about your age when it's great enough to concern you, my lady," he corrected her, with a grave way he had over trifles at times.

"Well, it was longer ago than yesterday," said she.

They stood at the gate, as children of the dawn who had reached the barrier of their fair land and must not venture beyond it. The top bar was shoulder-high to her; she crossed her arms, bare to the elbows in her loose-fitting blouse, and looked away over the range. The blue of its distances was dissolving into gray before the sun, like a veil in a flame. Soon it would lie harsh and unbeautified under the blaze of day.

"I don't suppose you ever want to leave it," he said, in a conviction founded on his reflections of a little while hefore.

"Leave it!" she echoed, her chin on her folded arms, her eyes fixed on the treeless sweep of sparse grass and low, melancholy, sapless gray sage. "There are times when I could run in my bare feet over rocks and thorns for a thousand miles, and put it behind me forever!"

"I was wrong," said he, confessing to himself, his voice soft, low; "I missed my guess."

"We used to go away, we were more away than here, but we're too poor now to take a trip, the post is the boundary of my world. My father used to be superintendent of this ranch," she explained, lifting her head, arms dropped to her sides. "The rustlers killed him five years ago, out there on that—that—damned, damned range!"