Perhaps my declaration to Miss Sampson had liberated my strongest
emotions.
However that might be, the fact was that no ride before had ever been
like this one--no sky so blue, no scene so open, free, and enchanting as
that beautiful gray-green range, no wind so sweet. The breeze that
rushed at me might have been laden with the perfume of Sally Langdon's
hair.
I sailed along on what seemed a strange ride. Grazing horses pranced and
whistled as I went by; jack-rabbits bounded away to hide in the longer
clumps of grass; a prowling wolf trotted from his covert near a herd of
cattle.
Far to the west rose the low, dark lines of bleak mountains. They were
always mysterious to me, as if holding a secret I needed to know.
It was a strange ride because in the back of my head worked a haunting
consciousness of the deadly nature of my business there on the frontier,
a business in such contrast with this dreaming and dallying, this
longing for what surely was futile.
Any moment I might be stripped of my disguise. Any moment I might have
to be the Ranger.
Sally kept the lead across the wide plain, and mounted to the top of a
ridge, where tired out, and satisfied with her victory, she awaited me.
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