d his
hand, stopping his exultant song long enough to shout a bon voyage to
the steamboat as he shot past, and the little boat darted from their
sight into the rain and the rolling vapor of the river like a hunted
rabbit into a tangle of briars.

"That's splendid!" she exclaimed, an exultant lilt in her voice. "That's
the spirit of this western country: direct, courageous, steadfast! Can't
you feel it, Mr. Boyd?"

His eyes shone and he leaned forward over the table with a fierce
eagerness. In that one moment he had caught a glimpse into the heart and
soul of Patience Cooper that fanned fiercely the flame already lighted
in his heart. His own feelings about the West, the almost tearful
reverence which had possessed him at the sight of those pioneer women,
many with babes at their breasts, that he daily had seen come into
Independence from the East to leave it on the West, the hardships past
great enough to give pause to men of strength, but not shaking their
calm, quiet determination to face greater to the end of that testing
trail, and suffer privations in a vast wilderness; his feelings, his
hopes, his faith, had come back to him in those few words almost as
though from some spirit mirror. He choked as he fought to master himself
and to speak with a level voice.

"Feel it?" he answered, his voice shaking. "I feel it sometimes until
the sheer joy of it hurts me! Wait until you stand on the outskirts of
Independence facing the sunset, and see those wagons, great and small,
plodding with the insistent determination of a wolverine to the distant
rendezvous! Close your eyes and picture that rendezvous, the caravan
slowly growing by the addition of straggling wagons from many feeding
roads. Wait until you stand on the edge of that trail, facing the west,
with rainbows in the mist of your eyes! Oh, Miss Cooper, I can't--but
perhaps we'd better go on deck and see what the weather promises."

She did not look at him, but as she arose her hand for one brief instant
rested lightly on his outflung arm, and set him aquiver with an ecstatic
agony that hurt even while it glorified him. He shook his head savagely,
rose and led the way to the door; and only the moral fiber and training
passed on to him through generations of gentlemen kept him from taking
her in his arms and smothering her with kisses; and in his tense
struggle to hold himself in check he did not realize that such an
indiscretion might have served him well and that