twilight, shot through with sunset coloring, made an exquisite glory
overhead, and far beyond us. It is all sacred to me even now, this
moment in Love's young dream. I put both my hands gently against her
fair round cheeks and looked down her into her brown eyes.

"Oh, Marjie," I said softly, and kissed her red lips just once.

She said never a word while we stood for a moment, a moment we never
forgot. The day's last gleam of gold swept about us, and the ripple of a
bird's song in the draw beyond the bend fell upon the ear. An instant
later both ponies gave a sudden start. We caught their bridle reins, and
looked for the cause. Nothing was in sight.

"It must have been a rattlesnake in that tall grass, Phil," Marjie
exclaimed. "The ponies don't like snakes, and they don't care for
flowers."

"There are no snakes here, Marjie. This is the garden of Eden without
the Serpent," I said gayly.

All the homeward way was a dream of joy. We forgot there was a Civil
War; that this was a land of aching hearts and dreary homes, and
bloodshed and suffering and danger and hate. We were young, it was April
on the prairies, and we had kissed each other in the pink-wreathed
shadows of the twilight. Oh, it was good to live!

The next morning O'mie came grinning up the hill.

"Say, Phil, ye know I cut the chape Neosho crowd last evening up to Rid
Range fur that black-eyed little Irish girl they call Kathleen. So I
came home afterwhoile behind you, not carin' to contaminate meself wid
such a common set after me pleasant company at Rid Range."

"Well, we managed to pull through without you, O'mie, but don't let it
happen again. It's too hard on the girls to be deprived of your
presence. Do be more considerate of us, my lord."

O'mie grinned more broadly than ever.

"Well, I see a sight worth waitin' fur on my homeward jaunt in the
gloamin'."

"What was it, a rattlesnake?"

"Yes, begorra, it was just that, an' worse. You remember the draw this
side of the big cottonwood, the one where the 'good Injun' come at us
last August, the time he got knocked sober at the old tepee ring?"

I gave a start and my cheeks grew hot. O'mie pretended not to notice me.

"Well," he went on, "just as I came beyont that ring on this side and
dips down toward the draw where Jean come from when he was aimin' to
hang a certain curly brown-haired scalp--"

A thrill of horror went through me at the picture.

"Ye needn't shiver. Injuns do that; even