Young Beaudry followed the lead she had given him.  “Yes, that is the most amazing thing in life—­that no matter how poor the soil and how bad the conditions fine and lovely things grow up everywhere.”

The sardonic smile on her dark face mocked him.  “You find a sermon in it, do you?”

“Don’t you?”

She plucked the wild flower out by the roots.  “It struggles—­and struggles—­and blooms for a day—­and withers.  What’s the use?” she demanded, almost savagely.  Then, before he could answer, the girl closed the door she had opened for him.  “We must be moving.  The sun has already set in the valley.”

His glances swept the park below.  Heavily wooded gulches pushed down from the roots of the mountains that girt Huerfano to meet the fences of the ranchers.  The cliffs rose sheer and bleak.  The panorama was a wild and primitive one.  It suggested to the troubled mind of the young man an eagle’s nest built far up in the crags from which the great bird could swoop down upon its victims.  He carried the figure farther.  Were these hillmen eagles, hawks, and vultures?  And was he beside them only a tomtit?  He wished he knew.

“Were you born here?” he asked, his thoughts jumping back to the girl beside him.

“Yes.”

“And you’ve always lived here?”

“Except for one year when I went away to school.”

“Where?”

“To Denver.”

The thing he was thinking jumped into words almost unconsciously.

“Do you like it here?”

“Like it?” Her dusky eyes stabbed at him.  “What does it matter whether I like it?  I have to live here, don’t I?”

The swift parry and thrust of the girl was almost ferocious.

“I oughtn’t to have put it that way,” he apologized.  “What I meant was, did you like your year outside at school?”

Abruptly she rose.  “We’ll be going.  You ride down.  My foot is all right now.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he answered promptly.  “You might injure yourself for life.”

“I tell you I’m all right,” she said, impatience in her voice.

To prove her claim she limped a few yards slowly.  In spite of a stubborn will the girl’s breath came raggedly.  Beaudry caught the bridle of the horse and followed her.

“Don’t, please.  You might hurt yourself,” he urged.

She nodded.  “All right.  Bring the horse close to that big rock.”

From the boulder she mounted without his help.  Presently she asked a careless question.

“Why do you call him Cornell?  Is it for the college?”

“Yes.  I went to school there a year.”  He roused himself to answer with the proper degree of lightness.  “At the ball games we barked in chorus a rhyme:  ‘Cornell I yell—­yell—­yell—­Cornell.’  That’s how it is with this old plug.  If I want to get anywhere before the day after to-morrow, I have to yell—­yell—­yell.”