Peak and Prairie. Fuller Anna

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      Sir Bryan, undeterred by these suggestions of his fancy, lifted up his voice and shouted "Hulloo!" and behold! a few minutes later, a horse came pushing through the scrub-oaks, bearing upon his back an enchanted princess. As was to be expected of a Colorado princess, enchanted or otherwise, she had not quite the traditional appearance. In lieu of a flowing robe of spotless white, she was clad in a plain black skirt and a shirt waist of striped cambric, while the golden fillet, if such she wore, was quite concealed by a very jaunty sailor-hat, than which no fillet could have been more becoming. In short, the pleasing vision which Sir Bryan beheld was far more to his taste than any princess of fairy lore could have been. As he sprang to his feet and lifted his hat he wondered whether the expression "nut-brown maid" was poetry. If so, he had performed an unprecedented feat in recalling it so aptly.

      There is a difference in the way men lift their hats, and Sir Bryan's way was a charming one.

      "Did you call?" asked the nut-brown maid.

      "No; I only answered when I heard you call my name."

      "Is your name Brian Boru?" she inquired, with animation.

      "I am an Irishman, and my name is Bryan, so they used to call me Brian Boru."

      "How very curious! That is the name of my bear!"

      "Of your bear?" he repeated in blank amazement.

      "Yes. Have you seen anything of him? I'm a little near-sighted and——"

      Sir Bryan Parkhurst never shirked a dilemma.

      "I've just shot a bear," he blurted out, "but I hope, with all my heart, it wasn't yours!"

      "Shot a bear?" cried the girl, in consternation. "Oh! how could you?"

      Before Sir Bryan could reach out a helping hand, her feet were on the ground.

      "Where is he? Oh! where is he?" she cried in tragic accents.

      Sir Bryan pointed to the prostrate form of the murdered bear. Alas! It must have been her bear, for she knelt down beside him, and gazed upon him long and mournfully.

      And truly there was something pathetic about the victim, viewed from this new standpoint. He lay on his side, exposing the wound, which was clotted with blood. His small eyes were open, and a red tongue just visible between his parted teeth. One short, rigid, foreleg was stretched out as though in remonstrance, and just within its embrace a fading spray of gilia lifted its fragile blossoms.

      Sir Bryan stood lost in contemplation of this singular scene; the graceful figure of the kneeling girl, bending over the mass of coarse brown fur; the flower, standing unscathed close beside the long, destructive claws. A few yards away, the horse lazily whisked his tail, while to the right the frowning crags rose, so near and steep that they seemed about to topple over and make an end of the improbable situation.

      At last the girl lifted her head, murmuring, "Straight through the heart!"

      The sportsman's vanity gave a little throb. It was a pretty shot, by Jove! He moved nearer.

      "I'm no end sorry about it," he declared.

      Alas, for that throb of vanity! His contrition did not have the true ring.

      The girl turned upon him with quick distrust. No, he was more glad than sorry.

      "If we were in England," she cried, with withering scorn, "you would have to be more than sorry."

      "In England?"

      "Yes, in England, or in Ireland, or anywhere round there. If I'd shot so much as a miserable pheasant on your land you'd have—you'd have had me up before the bailey!"

      Clearly the girl's reading of English fiction had confused her ideas of British magistracy. But Sir Bryan was generous, and overlooked side issues.

      "Is this your land?" he asked, gazing at the wild mountain side, and then at the flaming cheeks of the girl. She stood there like an animated bit of autumn coloring.

      "Of course it's my land," she declared.

      "But I didn't know it was your land."

      "You knew it wasn't yours!" she cried vehemently.

      Poor Sir Bryan was hopelessly bewildered. The great West was, after all, not quite like the rest of the world, if charming young ladies owned the mountain sides, danced attendance upon by bears of dangerous aspect and polished manners. He blushed violently, but he did not look in the least awkward.

      "I wish you would tell me your name," he said, feeling that if this remarkable young lady possessed anything so commonplace as a name, the knowledge of it might place him on a more equal footing with her.

      "Certainly, Mr. Bryan," she replied. "My name is Merriman; Kathleen Merriman," and she looked at him with great dignity but with no relenting.

      "Well, Miss Merriman, I don't suppose there's any good in talking about it. My being awfully sorry doesn't help matters any. I don't see that there's anything to be done about it, but to have the carcass carted off your land as soon as may be."

      "Carted off my land!" the girl cried, with kindling indignation. "You need not trouble yourself to do anything of the kind." Then, with a sudden change to the elegiac, she fixed her mournful gaze upon her departed friend and said, "I shall bury him where he lies!"

      In this softened mood she seemed less formidable, and Sir Bryan so far plucked up his spirit as to make a suggestion.

      "Perhaps I could help you," he said. "If I had a shovel, or something, I think I could dig a first-rate grave."

      The fair mourner looked at him doubtfully, and then she looked at his namesake, and apparently the poetic justice of the thing appealed to her.

      "There's a spade over at the house," she said, "and I don't know that it's any more than fair that you should bury him."

      Sir Bryan's spirits rose still higher at the hope of partial expiation of his crime; but with his rising spirits came a premonition of a good healthy appetite which would soon be due, and he asked meekly: "Would you mind, then, if I were to go back to town first, to get something to eat? A person doesn't dig so well, I suppose, on an empty stomach."

      "No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be."

      They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks.

      "Shall I lead your horse for you?" Sir Bryan asked.

"THE VAST SEA OF THE PRAIRIE."

      "No, thank you. Comrag will follow, all right;" and Comrag did follow, so close upon their heels, that Sir Bryan was in momentary expectation of being trampled upon.

      Comrag was an unbeautiful beast, and he permitted himself СКАЧАТЬ