FREEBOOTERS OF THE WILDERNESS


CHAPTER I

TO STRADDLE OR FIGHT

"Well," she asked, "are you going to straddle or fight?"

How like a woman, how like a child, how typical of the outsider's
shallow view of any struggle! As if all one had to do--was stand up
and fight! Mere fighting--that was easy; but to fight to the last
ditch only to find yourself beaten! That gave a fellow pause about
bucking the challenge of everyday life.

Wayland punched both fists in the jacket pockets of his sage-green
Service suit, and kicked a log back to the camp fire that smouldered in
front of his cabin. If she had been his wife he would have explained
what a fool-thing it was to argue that all a man had to do was fight.
Or if she had belonged to the general class--women--he could have met
her with the condescending silence of the general class--man; but for
him, she had never belonged to any general class.

She savored of his own Eastern World, he knew that, though he had met
her in this Western Back of Beyond half way between sky and earth on
the Holy Cross Mountain. Wayland could never quite analyze his own