Death, after all, in some manner or other comes to all living creatures. Hugh had no real reason for amazement at that still form in the herder’s tent. He was ready to confess he didn’t know a great deal about sheep: possibly Spot’s episode with the coyote would not have so surprised a more experienced herder. But now he felt as if a number of his preconceived ideas had been violently knocked out of him, and that is always dumbfounding. His camp-tender was not a Mexican, nor yet a laboring man of a certain type, but a girl.
He had seen some thousands of girls in his life, yet he found himself staring at the slim form on the horse as if he were gazing upon a miracle of nature. Every experience of the past few days might have been in some manner expected and he had only reacted because of qualities within himself; his experiences with Broken Fang and the coyote were wholly fitting in this wild, mountainous land, but he had never dreamed but that he had left all womankind a thousand miles behind him. This was a man’s land, not a place for the tender flesh of girls. This was the home of savage beasts, a region of dark forests and forbidding peaks, never a land of gentleness and ease such as women should know. He realized with a start that evidently his good manners had been left behind him also, for he was gazing at her in open-mouthed astonishment.
If the girl on the horse had been an Indian squaw, even an aged and wrinkled frontiersman’s dame, he would have felt that the axis of the world still stood at the proper angle. But this girl was white, in spite of her tan and the high color—not put on with a rabbit’s foot—in her cheeks. She was young, not more than twenty-two at most. And strangest of all she was pretty past all denial.
Hugh felt as if there must be some mistake. Perhaps in these lonely days in the hills he had lost the power of discrimination. He hadn’t seen a girl for endless weeks—centuries they seemed to him—and he had heard that such isolation affects the point of view. The girl might be white; by a long chance she might even be young; but by no possible circumstance had she a right to be pretty. Beauty dwelt in far cities, in gentle lands and distant, not in these rugged mountains. Yet the truth of his first observation became ever more apparent.
He steadied himself, closed his mouth, and tried to stand at his ease. The girl swung down from the horse. That motion, graceful as the leap of a deer, explained in a measure the mystery. It revealed a suppleness, a strength and litheness of body such as might stand the test of existence even on the frontier.
Hugh noted that she was a slender girl, rather tall, that she wore a soft felt hat over her chestnut hair, and that she had dark eyes under rather marvelous brows. Hugh was no amateur in regard to women. Now that he had regained his self-control he made a swift and unerring appraisal; yet found his amazement deepening at every instant. There was a freshness, an appeal about her slight figure, suggesting perfect health and superb physical development rather than weakness, and he was not blind to the gentleness and breeding in her soft features.
She seemed perfectly composed, wholly at ease. In her simplicity she found no embarrassment under his frank gaze. “Where’s Dan?” she asked.
Hugh straightened, somewhat startled. He had expected some sort of a formal greeting, a few words in apology or introduction, not this straight-out, uncompromising “Where’s Dan?” It seemed to him she acted somewhat suspicious of him, also.
She had, he observed, a well-bred voice. She spoke in clear, level tones that pleased his ear. The voice was wholly lacking in affectation, but it was simply brimming and vibrant with health and high spirits. Hugh noticed something else, too, and smiled inwardly. He couldn’t remember ever having been spoken to in just that way before. The level, impersonal tone implied an insurmountable social barrier between them. It was a somewhat similar tone, he remembered, to that in which he had occasionally spoken to a servant. In this case he obviously was the inferior.
He paused and reflected as to the whereabouts of Dan. The truth came to him in a moment. Dan of course referred to his predecessor. “He’s dead,” Hugh answered simply.
For the instant he was frightened. It occurred to him, when the words had gone too far to recall, that he should have been gentler. He might have prepared the girl, in some degree, for the shock. He didn’t want her to faint. But if he had expected any hysteria or excitement he was doomed to a fresh surprise. She opened her eyes; and it seemed to Hugh that she closed her lips—in a fine, hard line—just for an instant. “Dead?” she repeated slowly. “Killed—or did he just die?”
“He was killed,” Hugh answered in the straightforward way of one on a witness stand. “I found him dead in his tent. He’d been shot. The black dog was shot too.”
“And who are you?”
Hugh wasn’t exactly accustomed to this straight-out sort of questioning, but he mustered his faculties and made his answers. “Gaylord—Hugh Gaylord,” he said simply. “And if you want me to I’ll tell you all I know of this affair.”
“Perhaps that would be the best plan,” she agreed.
“I came over to the camp—to borrow something. I was with another chap—an Indian, Pete. We found this poor beggar dead. Pete started with him into the settlements today. It’s a wonder you didn’t meet him on the trail.”
“He probably took the other fork, heading toward Seven Mile. I came up from Horse Creek.”
As Hugh didn’t know the two places apart, or what they represented, this information did not clear matters up for him
