he was no longer his
half-indulgent, half-scornful superior. Her better birth and schooling
that had once been weapons to keep him at his distance, or bring her off
victorious in their encounters, had given way before the onset of
the natural man himself. She knew her cow-boy lover, with all that he
lacked, to be more than ever she could be, with all that she had. He was
her worshipper still, but her master, too. Therefore now, against the
baffling smile he gave her, she felt powerless. And once again a pang of
yearning for her mother to be near her to-day shot through the girl. She
looked from her untamed man to the untamed desert of Wyoming, and the
town where she was to take him as her wedded husband. But for his sake
she would not let him guess her loneliness.

He sat on his horse Monte, considering the pistol. Then he showed her a
rattlesnake coiled by the roots of some sage-brush. "Can I hit it?" he
inquired.

"You don't often miss them," said she, striving to be cheerful.

"Well, I'm told getting married unstrings some men." He aimed, and the
snake was shattered. "Maybe it's too early yet for the unstringing to
begin!" And with some deliberation he sent three more bullets into the
snake. "I reckon that's enough," said he.

"Was not the first one?"

"Oh, yes, for the snake." And then, with one leg crooked cow-boy fashion
across in front of his saddle-horn, he cleaned his pistol, and replaced
the empty cartridges.

Once more she ventured near the line of his reticence. "Has--has Trampas
seen you much lately?"

"Why, no; not for a right smart while. But I reckon he has not missed
me."

The Virginian spoke this in his gentlest voice. But his rebuffed
sweetheart turned her face away, and from her eyes she brushed a tear.

He reined his horse Monte beside her, and upon her cheek she felt his
kiss. "You are not the only mind-reader," said he, very tenderly. And
at this she clung to him, and laid her head upon his breast. "I had been
thinking," he went on, "that the way our marriage is to be was the most
beautiful way."

"It is the most beautiful," she murmured.

He slowly spoke out his thought, as if she had not said this. "No folks
to stare, no fuss, no jokes and ribbons and best bonnets, no public
eye nor talkin' of tongues when most yu' want to hear nothing and say
nothing."

She answered by holding him closer.

"Just the bishop of Wyoming to join us, and not even him after we're
once joined. I did