to be astonished by his
boldness, a young man was bowing before June, presenting his crooked
elbow, inviting her to the dance with all the polish that could possibly
lie on any one man. On account of an unusually enthusiastic clatter of
heels at that moment, Dr. Slavens and Miss Horton, a few paces distant,
could not hear what he said, but they caught their breaths a little
sharply when June took the proffered arm.

"Surest thing you know," they heard her eager little voice say as she
passed them with a happy, triumphant look behind.

Dr. Slavens looked at Miss Horton; Miss Horton looked at the doctor.
Both laughed.

"Well, I like that!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," he agreed, but apparently from quite a different angle, "so do I.
It's natural and unaffected; it's coming down to first principles. Well,
I don't see that there's anything left for you and me to do but use up
some of this moonlight in a walk. I'd like to see the river in this
light. Come?"

"Oh, that would be unconventional!" she protested.

But it was not a strong protest; more of a question perhaps, which left
it all to him.

"This is an unconventional country," he said. "Look at it, as white as
snow under this summer moon."

"It's lovely by night," she agreed; "but this Comanche is like a sore
spot on a clean skin. It's a blight and a disfigurement, and these
noises they make after dark sound like some savage revel."

"We'll put them behind us for two hours or so," he decided with finality
which allowed no further argument.

As they set off toward the river he did not offer her the support of his
arm, for she strode beside him with her hands swinging free, long step
to his long step, not a creature of whims and shams, he knew, quite able
to bear her own weight on a rougher road than that.

"Still it _is_ unconventional," she reflected, looking away over the
flat land.

"That's the beauty of it," said he. "Let's be just natural."

They passed beyond the straggling limits of Comanche, where the town
blended out into the plain in the tattered tents and road-battered
wagons of the most earnest of all the home-seekers, those who had staked
everything on the hope of drawing a piece of land which would serve at
last as a refuge against the world's buffeting.

Under their feet was the low-clinging sheep-sage and the running herbs
of yellow and gray which seemed so juiceless and dry to the eye, but
which were the provender of thousands of sheep and ca