weight upon his arm--would be
to startle her, and then all at once he would awaken from a dream to
find her gone. He thought he would feel very badly then, for probably he
would never be able to get back into the same dream again. So he was
cautious, resolving to make the thing last until it came true of itself.

Once when they followed the stream down, in the late afternoon, he had
mused himself so full of the wonder of her that he almost forgot his
caution in an amiable impulse to let her share in his feelings.

"You know," he began, "you're like as if I had been trying to think of a
word I wanted to say--some fine, big word, a fancy one--but I couldn't
think of it. You know how you can't think of the one you want sometimes,
only nothing else will do in place of it, and then all at once, when you
quit trying to think, it flashes over you. You're like that. I never
could think of you, but I just had to because I couldn't get along
without it, and then when I didn't expect it you just happened
along--the word came along and said itself."

Without speaking she had run ahead to pick the white and blue columbines
and pink roses. And he, alarmed at his boldness, fearing she would now
be afraid of him, went forward with the deep purpose of showing her a
light, careless mood, to convince her that he had meant nothing much.

To this end he told her lively anecdotes, chaste classics of the range
calculated to amuse, until they reached the very door of home:--About
the British sailor who, having drifted up the Sacramento valley, was
lured to mount a cow-pony known to be hysterical; of how he had declared
when they picked him up a moment later, "If I'd been aware of the gale
I'd have lashed myself to the rigging." Then about the other trusting
tenderfoot who was directed to insist at the stable in Santa Fe that
they give him a "bucking broncho;" who was promptly accommodated and
speedily unseated with much flourish, to the wicked glee of those who
had deceived him; and who, when he asked what the horse had done and was
told that he had "bucked," had thereupon declared gratefully, "Did he
only buck? It's a God's mercy he didn't _broncho_ too, or he'd have
killed me!"

From this he drifted into the anecdote of old Chief Chew-feather, who
became drunk one day and made a nuisance of himself in the streets of
Atchison; how he had been driven out of town by Marshal Ed Lanigan,
who, mounting his pony, chased him a mile or so, meanti