The Princeton union. [volume] (Princeton, Minn.) 1876-1976, 1905-11-09
CHAPTER vi.


~ was Katherine Colebrooke. There
had been a deal of letter writing be-
tween her and the young COW puncheI
Of late, of which perforce, by a singu-
lar irony of fate, the postmistress had
been the Involuntary instrument The
correspondence had followed a recent
hasty journey to New York, under
taken somewhat unwillingly by Ham
llton in the interest of certain affairs
connected with the settlement of an
estate
The pracipitancy of this latest turn
Of events bewildered Judith; but yet a
little While-a matter of weeks and
days-and her friendship with Hamil-
ton had been Of that pleasantly indefi-
mite estate situated somewhere on the
borderland of romance, kingdom
where there is no law but the mutual
interest of the wayfarers. Judith and
Peter had been pitifully new at the
game of life when the gods vouchsafed
them the equivocal blessing of propin-
guilty. Judith was but lately come
from the convent at Santa Fe and
Hamilton from the university, whose
honors availed him little in the trailing
Of cattle over the range or in the sweat
and tumult of the branding pen. It
was strange election of opportunity
for a man who had been class poet and
had rather conspicuously avoided ath-
letics during his entire college course.
In pursuing fortune westward Hamil-
ton did not lack for chroniclers, who
would not have missed a good story
for the want Of an authentic dramatic
Interpretation Of his plans. His uncle,
said they, who had put him through
college, was disposed to let him sink
or swim by his own efforts, or, again,
he had quarreled with this same omnip-
otent uncle and walked from his pres
ence with no prospects but those with
IN grasp of his own hand. Again, he
had taken the negative Of fair lady
more to heart than two and twenty is
In the habit of taking negatives. Peter
made no condolences. He went west
to punch COWS for the Wetmore out
tit. He was a distant connection of the
Wetmores through his mothers side
Of the family. ....
Judith's convent upbringing had con-
ferred Oh her the doubtful ADVANTAGE
Of gentlewoman's tastes and bearing,
making of her, therefore, an alien in
her fathers house. When Mrs, At
k1ns, who was responsible for her edu-
cation, realized the equivocal good of
these things and saw, moreover, that
the girl had grown to be a beauty, she
offered to adopt her. but Judith, with
the pitiful heroism of youth that I'M
derstands little Of what it is renounc-
ing, thought herself strong enough to
hold together family uncertain of
purpose as quicksilver
In those tragic days Of REIMBURSEMENT
came Peter Hamilton, as strange to the
bald conditions of frontier life as the
girl herself. From the beginning there
had been between them the barrier of
circumstance. Hamilton was poor,
Judith the mainstay Of a household
whose thriftlessness had become
proverb. He came of a family that
numbered signer Of the Declaration
Of Independence, a famous chief JUS
1ce and the dean Of a great university.
judith was uncertain of her right to
the very name she BORE And yet they
were young. he man, she woman
eternal fountain Of interest. A preco-
c1ous sense of the fitness Of things was
the compass that enabled Peter to steer
through the deep waters in the years
that followed. But the girl paid the
penalty of her great heart. In that
troublous sea Of friendship she was
soon adrift without rudder, sail or
compass.
Judith was now eight and twenty,
and a sculptor would have found a
hundred statues in her. Long Of limb,
deep bosomeG, youth and health radi-
ated from her as sparks fly upward.
In sunlight her black hair had the blu
ish iridescence of ripe plum. The
eyes were deep and questioning -the
eyes Of & young seraph whose wings
had not yet brushed the far distant
heights of paradise. And yet in this
wilderness that was furnishing for wo-
mans love and tears and laughter by
a perversity Of fate she walked alone.
She was a true daughter of the des-
ert, the child Of stark, unlovely cir
cumstance. No we'll bred romance Of
book and bells and churchly benedic-
ton had ushered her into being. Her
maternal grandfather had been the ia
nous Sioux chief, Flying Hawk; Eer
grandmother a white woman who
knew no word of her peoples tongue
nor yet her name or race. The Indians
found the white baby sleeping by her
dead mother after the massacre of an
emigrant train. They took her with
them, and she grew up in the Black
Hills country, white skinned Sioux.
marrying chief Of the people that
had slain her people. She accepted her
squaw's portion uncomplainfngly =
shaved cheerfully at squaw's work
while her brave made war on the
whites, hunted and smoked. She rear
ed her half breed children in the leg
ends of their fathers people and died
q withered crone, cursing the pale