Read 30,000 On the Hoof for Free Online

won't have to cook and bake."
    "Ha! ha! No you won't at all!" he ejaculated, gaily. "But I'm gad you see I can do it... Now we'll clear up. I'll wash, and you dry."
    After these chores were finished Logan went into the woods with an axe, to come forth burdened under an immense load of green, fragrant boughs.
    This he threw down beside the wagon. Then he unrolled a canvas to take out blankets.
    "There's hardly enough room in the wagon for you to sleep, let alone me," he said. "I'll make my bed on the ground. If skunks and coyotes, scorpions, tarantulas, and sidewinders come around, they'll get me first. Ha! ha! But really they're not to be laughed at. I won't take any risk of you being bitten, especially by a hydrophobia skunk. You're too doggone precious. I'd never find another woman like you."
    Lucinda said nothing. His words, like his actions, were so natural, so inevitable. Yet he showed fine feeling. She was a bride, and this was her wedding-night. Dusk came trooping out of the forest. She heard a sough of wind in the pines, an uneasy, breathing, melancholy sound. How lonely!
    She shivered a little. Logan's observations were keen. He fetched her heavy coat. Then he threw a bundle of the green pine foliage into the wagon, and some blankets, and climbed in the door after them. Lucinda heard him rummaging around at a great rate. Presently he leaped out, his hair rumpled.
    "There! All you got to do is use your coat for a pillow, take off your boots, crawl under the blankets, and you'll be jake... Well, the day is done. Our first day!... Now for a smoke. Lucinda, better stretch your legs a little before we turn in."
    She walked under the pines, along the brook, out into the open. But she did not go far. The windfalls, the clumps of sage might harbour some of the varmints Logan feared. She looked back to see he had replenished the camp fire. He stood beside it, a tall, dark, stalwart figure, singularly fitting this unfamiliar scene. There appeared to be something wild and raw, yet thrilling about it. The flames lighted up the exquisite lacy foliage of the pines. Sparks flew upwards. The great white wagon loomed like a spectre. Black always depressed Lucinda, but white frightened her.
    Logan stood there spreading his hands... He was splendid, she thought. She could well transfer the love she had given him as a boy to the grown man, for Logan had matured beyond his years. In repose his face showed fine, stern lines. He had suffered pain, hardship, if not grief. Lucinda's fears of Logan vanished like the columns of smoke blowing away into the darkness. She had vague fears of this West, and she divined they would be magnified and multiplied, but never would there be a fear of Logan Huett.
    Whatever it would cost her, she was glad she had answered to his call for a mate, and she would try to make herself a worthy one.
    She returned to the fire and warmed her hands over the blaze. How quickly the air had chilled!
    "I never knew how good fire could feel," she said, laughing.
    "Ha! You said a lot." Then he drew her to a seat on the log near by. He removed his pipe and knocked the ashes from it. "Lucinda,' I'm not much of a fellow to talk," he said, earnestly, with the light from the fire playing on his dark strong face and in his clear grey eyes. "Sure, I'll talk your head off about cattle and range, bears and cougars, Indians and all that's wild. But I mean the--the deep things--the things here----" and he tapped his broad breast. "I've got them here, only they're hard to say... Anyway, words would never tell how I appreciate your leaving your people, your friends and civilized comforts, to come out to this wild Arizona range. To be my wife--my pardner I It's almost too good to be true. And I love you for it... I reckon I was selfish to make you come to me and rush you at that. But you'll forgive me when you see our ranch--the work that's to be done--and winter coming fast... You're only a young girl, Lucinda. Only eighteen! And I feel