Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1917-12-14
cedar grown blum beyond while his

cedhr grown DIuu DeyOn0 while MS
horse stood knee deep In the little
stream. She did not know him, and
there were not so many travellers in
the land that strangers were a matter
of Indifference.
Blue welcomed the horse with a DEM
ocratic nicker and went forward brisk
ly. And the rider turned his head,
eyed the girl sharply as she came up
and nodded a cursory greeting. His
horse lifted it's head to look, decided
that 1t wanted another swallow or two
and lowered its muzzle again to the
water.
Billy Louise could not form any opin-
ion of the mans age or personality, for
he was encased in a wolfskin coat
which covered him completely from
hat brim to ankles. She got an impress
sion of a thin, dark face and a sharp
glance from eyes that seemed dark
also. There was q thin, high nose, and
beyond that Billy Louise did not look.
If she had the mouth must certainly
have treasured her somewhat.
Blue stepped nonchalantly down into
the stream beside the strange horse
and went across without stopping to
drink. The strange horse moved ON
also, as if that We're the natural thing
to do-which it was, since chance sent
them travelling the same trail. Billy
Louise set her teeth together with the
queer little vicious click that had al
ways been her habit when she felt
thwarted and constrained to yield to
circumstances and Strengthened herself
in the saddle.
looks like a Storm" the fur coated
n observed, with a perfectly trans
parent attempt to tighten the awk-
wardness.
Billy Louise tilted her chin upward
and gazed at the gray sweep of clouds
moving sullenly toward the mountains
at her back. She glanced at the man
and caught him looking intently at her
face.
He did not look away Immediately,
as he should have done, and Billy Lou
Use felt a little heat wave of embar-
rassment, emphasized by resentment.
"Are you going far?" he queried In
the same tone he had employed before.
six miles," she answered shortly,
though she tried TO be decently civil.
1--WE about eighteen" he said.
"Looks like we'll both get caught out
in a blizzard"
Certainly he had a pleasant enough
voice, and, after all, it was not his
fault that he happened to be at the
crossing when she rode out of the
gorge. Billy Louise, in common JUS
tice, laid aside her resentment and
looked at him with a hint of a smile
at the corners of her lips.
'That's what we have to expect when
we travel in this country in the win
ter she replied. Eighteen miles will
take you long after dark"
"Well l was sort of figuring on put
ting up at some ranch II it got too bad.
There's a ranch somewhere ahead on
the Wolverine, isn't there?"
Yes" Billy Louise bit her lip, but
hospitality is an unwritten law Of the
West, a law not to be lightly broken.
"That's where l live. Well be glad to
have you stop there Of course"
The stranger must have felt and adj
mired the unconscious dignity of her
toue and words, for he thanked her
simply and RETAINED from looking too
fntently at her face.
Fine siftings of snow, like meal flung
down from a gigantic sieve, swept into
their faces as they rode on. The man
turned his face toward her after q long
silence. She was riding with bowed
head and face half turned from him
and the wind alike.
You'd better ride on ahead and get
in out Of this" he said CURLY. your
horse is fresh. It's going to be worse