s growing
pinker while I looked.

She did not glance up, or even start; so she must have known, all along,
that I was headed her way. She went on making a lot of marks that didn't
seem to fit anywhere, and that seemed to me a bit wobbly and uncertain.
I caught just the least hint of a smile twitching the corner of her
mouth--I wanted awfully to kiss it!

"Yes? I believe I have at last got everything--King's Highway--in the
proper perspective and the proper proportion," she said, stumbling a bit
over the alliteration--and no wonder. It was a sentence to stampede
cattle; but I didn't stampede. I wanted, more than ever, to kiss--but
I won't be like Barney, if I can help it.

"It's too far off--too unattainable," I criticized--meaning something more
than her sketch of the pass. "And it's too narrow. If a fellow rode in
there he would have to go straight on through; there wouldn't be a chance
to turn back."

"Ergo, a fellow shouldn't ride in," she retorted, with a composure
positively wicked, considering my feelings. "Though it does seem that a
fellow rather enjoys going straight on through, regardless of anything;
promises, for instance."

That was the gauntlet I'd been hoping for. From the minute I first saw her
there it flashed upon me that she was astonished and indignant that night
when she saw Frosty and me come charging through the pass, after me
telling her I wouldn't do it any more. It looked to me like I'd have to
square myself, so I was glad enough of the chance.

"Sometimes a fellow has to do things regardless of--promises,"
I explained. "Sometimes it's a matter of life and death. If a fellow's
father, for instance--"

"Oh, I know; Edith told me all about it." Her tone was curious, and while
it did not encourage further explanations or apologies, it also lacked
absolution of the offense I had committed.

I sat down in the grass, half-facing her to better my chance of a look
into her eyes. I was consumed by a desire to know if they still had the
power to send crimply waves all over me. For the rest, she was prettier
even than I remembered her to be, and I could fairly see what little
sense or composure I had left slide away from me. I looked at her
fatuously, and she looked speculatively at a sharp ridge of the divide as
if that sketch were the only thing around there that could possibly
interest her.

"Why do you spend every summer out here in the wilderness?" I asked,
feeling certain that nothing but