intolerable, he assured himself did not at all follow. He had laughed
at the idea. He had even argued it out sensibly. Was it reasonable to
suppose, he asked himself, that after circling the great globe three
times he should find the one girl on it who alone could make him
happy, sitting behind a post-trader's counter on the open prairie?
His interest in Miss Cahill was the result of propinquity, that was
all. It was due to the fact that there was no one else at hand,
because he was sorry for her loneliness, because her absurd social
ostracism had touched his sympathy. How long after he reached New
York would he remember the little comrade with the brave, boyish eyes
set in the delicate, feminine head, with its great waves of gorgeous
hair? It would not be long, he guessed. He might remember the way she
rode her pony, how she swung from her Mexican saddle and caught up a
gauntlet from the ground. Yes, he certainly would remember that, and
he would remember the day he had galloped after her and ridden with
her through the Indian village, and again that day when they rode to
the water-fall and the Lover's Leap. And he would remember her face
at night as it bent over the books he borrowed for her, which she
read while they were at mess, sitting in her high chair with her chin
resting in her palms, staring down at the book before her. And the
trick she had, whenever he spoke, of raising her head and looking
into the fire, her eyes lighting and her lips smiling. They would be
pleasant memories, he was sure. But once back again in the whirl and
rush of the great world outside of Fort Crockett, even as memories
they would pass away.

Mary Cahill made no outward answer to the rebellious utterance of
Lieutenant Ranson. She only bent her eyes on her book and tried to
think what the post would hold for her when he had carried out his
threat and betaken himself into the world and out of her life