“I’ll have trouble enough getting near,” she told him, “the best I can do. Another stranger would make them wilder still.”
The boy caught her hand as she swung up on Buckskin.
“Be careful, Sis,” he said, “look sharp on every side.”
He had never forgotten that stretched rope.
Neither had Nance, but she walked bravely in a faith which made her serenely bold.
“‘Commit thy way unto the Lord,’” she said smiling, “‘Trust also in Him.’ Don’t you fret—nor let Mammy, if you can help it. I’ll be back soon as I can.”
Then she was gone down across the flats with Buckskin on the lope, one hand feeling carefully for the package she had tied behind the saddle. This contained a goodly piece of boiled corn beef and two slices of her mother’s bread, fresh baked the day before. She was going armed with bribery.
The whole Nameless Valley between its great escarpments was fresh and cool with shadow, for the sun was not yet above Mystery ridge and the rimrock that marked the way to the cañon.
The river itself talked to the boulders in its bed, and the little winds that drew up the myriad defiles were sweet with the fragrance of pines and that nameless scent of water which cannot be described. All these things were the joy of life to Nance.
She loved them with a passion whose force she did not comprehend. They were what sweetened her hard and ceaseless toil, what made of each new day in her monotonous round something to be met with eager gladness, to be lived through joyfully, missing nothing of the promise of dawn, the fulfillment of noon, the blessing of twilight. They had stirred and delighted the nomad heart of her father before her, they had filled her own with contentment.