. . and she had called him Dave. He
climbed the steps to his room with energy and life tingling in his
limbs; then he stood in his window and for a long while watched the
traffic in the street below. That is, his eyes were directed to the
traffic, but what he saw was a merry girl in a brown sweater, showering
her glances of admiration upon a raw youth of the ranges whose highest
ambition was to break six bottles with six bullets. And she had even
held that to be a worthy ambition. She had said, "Perhaps the day is
coming when our country will want men who can shoot and ride more than
it will want lawyers or professors." He smiled at the recollection of
her words. The romantic days of youth! like the mirage of sunrise they
fade and are lost in the morning of life. . . . And their young
philosophies! The night they found the dead calf; he had propounded
the wisdom that it is always the innocent thing that suffers; that the
crittur that can't run gets caught. Well, that seemed to hold good.
Wasn't that what Conward had argued to him this very afternoon, and he
had found no answer? He wondered what Reenie's experience had
been. . . . And then the compact under the spruce trees. . . . "Come
to me--like that--" she had said, "and then--then we'll know." And
to-day she had called him Dave.
He dressed with care. The Chinese boy was never more obsequious in his
attentions, and Dave never presented a more manly appearance.
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