Honoré Willsie

“ Not five minutes later, he thundered across the bridge on Fossil. Jessie already had reached the foot of the corkscrew trail. He thrust the spurs into Fossil’s flanks.
Jessie was half-way up the canyon wall when Hugh, setting Fossil to the first up-grade, shouted to her. He could see Magpie’s impatient champing jaw and Jessie’s face peering soberly above it.
“Wait for me, Jessie!” he shouted.
“I can’t hold Magpie on this grade. He’s too fresh.” ”

“ There were lights on the canyon floor in the air-mail camp. The west-going mail must be late.
If you refuse to accede to a loved one’s wishes while he lives, of what avail is it to accede to them after death?
Ah, but Bookie had wished it to be so! Two years! Bookie, after giving all that he had to Hugh for twenty-five years, asked in return two years, and he meant, Hugh knew, that these two years should be given to books and to Bookie’s thought on them and on the people of Wyoming who passed the window of The Lariat. To exile himself for two years from his work. Exile! What a tragic word! ”

“ Over the serene top of the black canyon wall surged the yellow moon. Across its mellow face moved a line of diminutive silhouetted horses. Some one was belated on the trail. Johnny Parnell, perhaps, bringing down a few mounts for such enterprising dudes as would wish to use the saddle on the ride to the ranch, instead of the jitney. ”

“ And she had a strange conviction, as, under her skilled questioning, he told her more of himself, that here was a man far too big to remain in The Lariat or in Fort Sioux.
And Hugh—Hugh who had finished with the sex for ever—was meeting in Miriam Page that which he had not known a woman could possess: a mind long trained in competitive thinking with keen-thinking men, a mind with the suavity and complexity of a widely experienced man’s. Coupled with this, a physical presence that was the very essence of the feminine. Hugh was disturbed, bewildered, fascinated. ”

“ Only the man whose work fulfills the urgent desire of his mind and absorbs the best of his talents, whose work fits the peculiar needs of his temperament and appeals to every angle of his imagination can understand Hugh’s love for the particular branch of geology which he had made his own, or appreciate fully the devastating nature of the demand in Bookie’s will. ”

“ Miriam rose. “I had not realized that it was so late.”
“Miss Page,” said Hugh, still without expression, “this is my wife.”
Miriam held out her hand. “I suppose, Mrs. Stewart,” she said, “that if you were going out to this ranch, you’d go horseback. I wish I were enough of a horsewoman to do it.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” returned Jessie, with her usual lazy casualness. “I prefer a car to a horse for a long ride. Any one would.”
“Are the western horses really so difficult to ride?” Miss Page went on, pleasantly, but studying Jessie quite frankly.
“It all depends on the horse,” replied Jessie. ”

“ Perhaps, even had he recognized his own feeling from the first moment of meeting Miriam, it would have been too late. A man of Hugh’s type has very little chance to escape from a woman like Miriam. Only Miriam herself could provide that chance.
They talked rapidly of many things in this first meeting. They said much and they felt more. But both of their faces were mask-like when they turned them toward Jessie, sauntering in at the open door. Carefully mask-like on Hugh’s part, as Jessie saw at once.
“Hello,” she said casually. “I think you must be the Miss Page Johnny Parnell is looking for. ”

“ Hugh pushed the bit of fossil skin back beside the last western novel and turned to the book shelves. Row on row, the thoughts of the few men who had been able to express themselves in the little time that had elapsed since man replaced the dinosaur. ”

“ Fifth, the solicitude for Wyoming which comes when you see the attitude of its citizens toward books and the understanding of these people which comes when you realize what they refuse to read.
“All these with the ranch and the Old Sioux Tract go to Hugh, with one proviso. That from the date of my death for the period of two years, giving up the business of fossil hunting, he devote himself entirely to running The Lariat. ”

“ He had been deeply disappointed in his wife. He had not the slightest desire to complicate his life by contact with any other woman. And so even his habit of self-analysis did not suffice to warn him, until it was too late. ”