Judith of the Plains

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r a glance backward. Judith strove now to put him and the memory of that day from her mind by turning towards the open country without a glance in the direction he had taken. But her thoughts were weary of journeying over that trail that she would not look towards; in imagination she had travelled it with Peter a hundred times, saw each dip and turn of the yellow road, each feature of the landscape as he rode exultant to Kitty, to be turned, tried, taken or left as her mood should prompt. But Judith w

as a connection of the Wetmores, as was he, though through opposite sides of the house. In the few minutes' talk that followed, he had the disconcerting sensation of being "talked down to." There was the indulgent tolerance of the woman of the world to the "nice boy" about this amazing young woman, who might have been eighteen. Hamilton had repudiated the very suggestion of being a "nice boy." But he felt himself blushing, groping for words, saying stupid things, sup

t it was characteristic of him to make no inquiries. On the whole, he found the situation meeting with a greater number of the artistic requirements than such situations usually presented. He was still dallying with this pleasant vagueness of sensation when he picked

ning corn, was worthy a cycle of sonnets, but pray leave the making of them to some one else! By daylight the jade-colored eyes seemed to shut out the world. The pupils shrank to pin-points. The green looked [pg 144] deep-as many fathoms as the sea. She was all Diana by daylight,

smaid at a famous wedding of six years back, when she had deflected the admiration from the bride and remained the central figure of the picture. Her portrait by Sargent had been the sensation of the Salon when he had been a grubby-faced boy with his nose in a Latin grammar. An unusual situation was abhorrent to him. That he should marry an ol

inging westward over the prairies. She had confided to him that her work claimed her and that she must renounce those sweet responsibilities that m

to which Kitty was retreating. With the vivid plainswoman in the foreground, the pale-haired writer of verse dwindled almost to reminiscence. But the reverence for the usual, that made up the underlying motive for so much of Hamilton's conduct, presented barriers alongside of which his previous quandary regarding Miss Colebrooke's seniority shrank to insignificance. He might marry a woman older than himself and swallow the grimace of it, but by no conceivable system of argument could he persuade himself to marry into a family like that of the Rodneys-the girl hersel

f Kitty. But alas for sanctuaries built to refuge wounded pride! He found Kitty the pivot of an adoring coterie, the magazines flowing with the milk and honey of her verse and she looking younger, if possible, than when he had first known her. Time, experience, even the pangs of literary parturition

ed warning instantly, deep feeling and the curled and perfumed phrase being suspicious cronies and sure to rouse those lightly slumbering watch-dogs, the feminine wits. But Peter only turned the other cheek. More than once, in the days that followed, he devoutly thanked his patron saint, caution, that his relations with

one significant fact that she would not be averse to the renewal of his suit. In reading her letter he made no allowance for the fact that the lady had made a fine art of saying things, and that her joy and regret at their meeting and parting might have been reminiscent of the printed passion that was so prominent a feature

her visitor as if his breakneck ride across the desert had been in the nature of an afternoon call. If Judith, knowing

o desolation a quality more melancholy than utter barrenness. Glittering in the sunlight, the beds of alkali gleamed leper white; above them the agitated air was like the hot waves that dance and quiver about iron at white heat. From horizon to horizon the curse of God seemed to have fallen on the land; it was as if, cursing it, He had forgotten it, and left it as the

or hunger, a sentence more dreadful than the law of the land or the law of the rope would have given them, the desert, like the sea, seldom gave up her own. It was more than probable that no woman except Alida Rodney had ever taken that trail before, and reasonably c

n neck. "We're in for"-Judith flung her head up and confronted

mare settle down to work. But her flying hoofs made little apparent progress against the space and silence of the desert. Five, ten, fifteen miles and the cur

a blood-red pool in his wake, like fugitive Cain. Already night was sweeping over the earth from mountain shadows that flowed imperceptibly together like blackened pools. To the girl following the trail the silence was

e to be completed. The wilderness was being gradually swallowed by the shadows, as deliberately as a snake swallows its victim. They were nearing the mountains. The hot blasts of air from the deser

he marrow of her bones, read ghostly warnings in the empty eye-sockets of the grinning skulls that stared up at her. She dared not think of the dangers that the loomin

sly, like the imprisoned roar of the sea from a shell, she could hear the regular beat of horse's hoofs following up the steep mountain grade. She scrambled up with the desperate nimbleness of a hunted thing, but when she attempted to vault to the saddle her limbs failed and she sank clinging to the pommel. Twice she tried and twice the trembling of her limbs held her captive. With the loss of each moment the beat of the hoofs on the trail below became more distinct. The very desperation of

the widening of the trail to urge Dolly forward. Her impulse was to put spurs to the mare and run, to take chances with loose stones, a narrowing trail, and the possibility

seman above. They were so near that Judith could hear the labored breathing of the sweating horse. The blackness of the night had become a tangible thing. The towering mountains were one piece with the gaping precipice, the trail,

out a voice from the darkness. At sound of it Judith's

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