When Carson left the cabin he followed the winding trail that led to the valley below. The road to Saguache showed the hoofprints of a prospector’s outfit, and the marks of a sleigh leading to Del Norte. The glare of the sun on the reflected snow was blinding and he drew his hat down over his eyes. He was thinking of his worthless life since leaving college. Once he had builded lofty hopes of future doings in the world, but he had allowed himself to drift; his ship of fate had gone wherever the strongest tide wind carried. He saw now that he might have marked out some honorable career and piloted his course toward it. Others of his class in college were in a fair way to make their mark in the world. Why was it not so with him? It was born in him, as it had 185 been in his father, to choose the wild life of the frontier in preference to holding the presidency of a bank in Atlanta. He felt that the world in its wildest freedom was his for his pleasure. The cords of restraint which society demanded were to him the fetters of a tyrant ruler, and so, as Sampson broke the green withes which bound him, Carson broke the laws of society––nay civilization, and married a squaw according to the ceremony of her people. He repented the act to some extent, and then cast his cares aside, with the comforting knowledge that the world was too busy a place for people to give themselves much concern over his affairs. Long ago he realized that if he threw himself into the swirl of humanity and allowed himself to become a part of its motives and its emotions, that it would require a herculean effort to attain a position where he could look over the heads of other men. That position, he argued, was not worth the life-long effort required. Withal, he could not bring himself to quite understand 186 why he had married Mary Greenwater, unless that she possessed some occult power and gained control over forces of his nature which he did not understand. True, there was but little or no obligation to the ceremony. It held good in the Cherokee Indian nation, that government within a government. Outside that limited space of ground it was null and void. He was a free man under the laws of his own government. Yet that act, of his own creation, somehow seemed to stand over him like a Frankenstein with an uplifted axe.

The snow was deep, and as he plodded along with these thoughts running through his mind, he heard a cry. Glancing backwards he saw a horse drawing a sleigh, plunging madly down the road. The reins were held by a woman, frantically urging the horse forward. Some distance behind four huge mountain lions were in hot pursuit, their heavy bodies crouching and springing forward many feet at a leap. Carson took in the situation at a glance and, raising his hand as a signal to the girl 187 in the sleigh to rein in, he sprang into the vehicle as she passed. The momentary pause had given the beasts a chance to gain, when, drawing his revolver, he fired at the foremost and sent it rolling in the snow. Another shot and a second lion paused with a mighty roar. At this the other two turned and fled in the opposite direction.

Carson now took the reins and stopped the horse. The animal was trembling with fright, while the girl was calm but pale.

“Rather a close shave, eh, Sis?”

“Truly,” she replied, “how fortunate you were here. I was driving to Del Norte when I met the lions. They were gamboling in the snow like kittens. When I turned Bess, they pursued. I want the one you have just killed, I want to have him mounted to remember today,––and––and––you.”

“By all means, Miss, you shall have it, but where are you going now?”

“Back to Saguache after this fright. Poor Old Bess could not have stood the 188 race much farther. See how she trembles. I am the niece of Mr. Amos. My name is Annie Amos. I have friends in Del Norte, whom I intended to visit. I shall wait now until I have an escort.”

“Ah––my name is Carson––Jack Carson. I was going to Saguache to see Mr. Amos, the assayer, to have him test a jug handle,––er, that is, to have the jug handle test him. I don’t mean that; I mean our mine is named the Jug Handle, I will get it right after awhile, and I want him to make a test of the ore.”

“Confound it,” he thought as he turned the horse, “I haven’t the sense of a jackrabbit to make a break like that.”

One of the lions lay pawing the snow in its death struggle and as Carson came near, it reared itself as if to make one last leap. Its eyes gleamed in savage yellow, foam fell in flecks from its mouth, while a tiny stream of crimson stained the snow. Carson’s weapon spit fire and the creature rolled over motionless. He dragged the carcass to the end of the sleigh and, lifting 189 it upon the edge of the box, made it fast.

“If you are going to Saguache to see my uncle, I fear you will be disappointed as he left this morning for an absence of several days.”

“That does not matter as I have other business anyway. Most any time will do, as I am in town quite often. We would better not drive so fast. Your horse is in a foam.”

Carson was fast becoming interested in the girl at his side. Her calm poise, after the exciting adventures with the mountain lions, surprised him. Other women would have been hysterical, but here by his side sat a girl not yet out of her teens, as calm and collected as a veteran soldier after the battle. And Amos, the man he was going to see and intended to kill if he proved to be the villain he suspected him to be, was her uncle.

The white billows rose rank on rank on the distant mountains, while the snow of the valley shrunk visibly away, leaving the grey rocks naked and protuberant.

The newly-made acquaintances chatted gaily as the horse jogged along.

“I was thinking of your remark awhile ago,” said Carson, “that you would go to Del Norte tomorrow if you had an escort, and as I have some time to idle away it would give me pleasure to drive you over.”

“It would give me equal pleasure to have you do so,” she replied with admirable frankness, “that is, if you are going there anyway.”

“I may need to purchase some new implements with which to work the Aberdeen––I mean the Jug Handle mine,” he explained. “I have heard of a new drill they are working over there and it may be just the thing for the formation we are now in.”

“I see,” said the girl, as a mischievous smile flitted about her lips, “and I am very glad you will accompany me. I shall make you acquainted with some of my very dear friends.”

Carson was forgetting his millions in the mine and letting his mind wander to the expected joys of entertaining and being 191 entertained by people of real worth once more. He felt returning pride, and then the thought of the Frankenstein with the uplifted axe made him groan inwardly. But pshaw! she did not know––never would know, and what people do not know will not hurt them, he reasoned.

He felt an increasing admiration for the girl beside him. They were alone in the wide expanse of valley and had known each other only an hour, yet this girl was willing to trust to his honor and manhood. And be it said for Carson, as it may be said for thousands of other men on the American frontier, he would have yielded his life rather than betray that sacred trust. Instances like this are common in the West.

As they drove down the main street of Saguache, the passers looked curiously at the pair in the sleigh and at the dead lion strapped behind. When they stopped in front of the postoffice, a crowd gathered around the sleigh. A supple figure edged through the crowd and addressed the girl:

“Kill it all by yourself, Annie?”

The familiarity with which he spoke nettled the girl, and she turned her head without answering. The supple figure felt the rebuff and all the more because others noticed it. He stood his ground, however, until Carson returned and when he saw his face he quickly drew out of sight.

“Tomorrow at seven,” said Carson, as he bade her good-bye at her house.

Carson went to his hotel with a lighter heart than he had had for months. He lit a cigar and sat by the window, then felt for something in his pocket, and threw it in the wood-box. “There are other jug handles,” he said to himself.

He walked the streets aimlessly until supper. He retired early and tried to sleep, but his thoughts ran wild on the events of the day. He could think of no one except Annie. It was still early in the night, when he arose from a restless bed and went out on the streets. Lights blazed from the Lone Tree saloon, and as he entered he saw a crowd about the faro table. The sudden exclamations of many voices 193 told that some one was winning heavily. He pressed forward through the crowd and saw the form of a woman. When she partially turned her face, he felt his heart give a great throb, and he fled into the street.

The remainder of the night he walked through the crunching snow, while the silent stars seemed to gaze with tearful eyes upon him in this, the greatest misery he had ever known. He walked several miles out of town to avoid meeting anyone he knew and then presented himself at the Amos residence.

“I believe it is seven o’clock, Miss Annie,” he said, when she answered his call.

“Yes, and I am ready,” was the cheerful answer.