Nevertheless the Girl lit a match for him from the candle which Wowkle held up to her, and, while the latter returned the candle to the mantel, Johnson lighted his cigar from the burning match between her fingers.

"Oh, Girl, how I'd love to know you!" he suddenly cried with the fire of love in his eyes.

"But you do know me," was her answer, as she watched the smoke from his cigar curl upwards toward the ceiling.

"Not well enough," he sighed.

For a brief second only she was silent. Whether she read his thoughts it would be difficult to say; but there came a moment soon when she could not mistake them.

"What's your drift, anyway?" she asked, looking him full in the face.

"To know you as Dante knew the lady--'One hour for me, one hour worth the world,'" he told her, all the while watching and loving her beauty.

At the thought she trembled a little, though she answered with characteristic bluntness:

"He didn't git it, Mr. Johnson."

"All the same there are women we could die for," insisted Johnson, dreamily.

The Girl was in the act of carrying her cup to her mouth but put it down on the table. Leaning forward, she inquired somewhat sneeringly:

"Mr. Johnson, how many times have you died?" Johnson did not have to think twice before answering. With wide, truthful eyes he said:

"That day on the road to Monterey I said just that one woman for me. I wanted to kiss you then," he added, taking her hand in his. And, strange to say, she was not angry, not unwilling, but sweetly tender and modest as she let it lay there.

"But, Mr. Johnson, some men think so much o' kisses that they don't want a second kiss from the same girl," spoke up the Girl after a moment's reflection.

"Doesn't that depend on whether they love her or not? Now all loves are not alike," reasoned the man in all truthfulness.

"No, but they all have the same aim--to git 'er if they can," contended the Girl, gently withdrawing her hand.

Silence filled the room.

"Ah, I see you don't know what love is," at length sighed Johnson, watching the colour come and go from her face.

The Girl hesitated, then answered in a confused, uneven voice:

"Nope. Mother used to say, 'It's a tickling sensation at the heart that you can't scratch,' an' we'll let it go at that."

"Oh, Girl, you're bully!" laughed the man, rising, and making an attempt to embrace her. But all of a sudden he stopped and stood with a bewildered look upon his face: a fierce gale was sweeping the mountain.

It filtered in through the crevices of the walls and doors; the lights flickered; the curtains swayed; and the cabin itself rocked uncertainly until it seemed as if it would be uprooted. It was all over in a minute.

In fact, the wind had died away almost simultaneously with the Girl's loud cry of "Wowkle, hist the winder!"

It is not to be wondered at, however, that Johnson looked apprehensively about him with every fresh impulse of the gale. The Girl's description of the storms on the mountain was fresh in his mind, and there was also good and sufficient reason why he should not be caught in a blizzard on the top of Cloudy Mountain! Nevertheless, as before, the calm look which he saw on the Girl's face rea.s.sured him. Advancing once more towards her, he stretched out his arms as if to gather her in them.

"Look out, you'll muss my roses!" she cried, waving him back and dodging Wowkle who, having cleared the table, was now making her last trip to the cupboard.

"Well, hadn't you better take them off then?" suggested Johnson, still following her up.

"Give a man an inch an' he'll be at Sank Hosey before you know it!" she flung at him over her shoulder, and made straightway for the bureau.

But although Johnson desisted, he kept his eyes upon her as she took the roses from her hair, losing none of the picture that she made with the light beating and playing upon her glimmering eyes, her rosy cheeks and her parted lips.

"Is there--is there anyone else?" he inquired falteringly, half-fearful lest there was.

"A man always says, 'who was the first one?' but the girl says, 'who'll be the next one?'" she returned, as she carefully laid the roses in her bureau drawer.

"But the time comes when there never will be a next one."

"No?"

"No."

"I'd hate to stake my pile on that," observed the Girl, drily. She blew up each glove as it came off and likewise carefully laid them away in the bureau drawer.

By this time Wowkle's soft tread had ceased, her duties for the night were over, and she stood at the table waiting to be dismissed.

"Wowkle, git to your wigwam!" suddenly ordered her mistress, watching her until she disappeared into the cupboard; but she did not see the Indian woman's lips draw back in a half-grin as she closed the door behind her.

"Oh, you're sending her away! Must I go, too?" asked Johnson, dismally.

"No--not jest yet; you can stay a--a hour or two longer," the Girl informed him with a smile; and turning once more to the bureau she busied herself there for a few minutes longer.

Johnson's joy knew no bounds; he burst out delightedly:

"Why, I'm like Dante! I want the world in that hour, because, you see, I'm afraid the door of this little paradise might be shut to me after-- Let's say this is my one hour--the hour that gave me--that kiss I want."

"Go long! You go to gra.s.s!" returned the Girl with a nervous little laugh.

Johnson made one more effort and won out; that is, he succeeded, at last, in getting her in his grasp.

"Listen," said the determined lover, pleading for a kiss as he would have pleaded for his very life.

It was at this juncture that Wowkle, silently, stealthily, emerged from the cupboard and made her way over to the door. Her feet were heavily moccasined and she was blanketed in a stout blanket of gay colouring.

"Ugh--some snow!" she muttered, as a gust of wind beat against her face and drove great snow-flakes into the room, fairly taking her breath away. But her words fell on deaf ears. For, oblivious to the storm that was now raging outside, the youthful pair of lovers continued to concentrate their thoughts upon the storm that was raging within their own b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the Girl keeping up the struggle with herself, while the man urged her on as only he knew how.

"Why, if I let you take one you'd take two," denied the Girl, half-yielding by her very words, if she but knew it.

"No, I wouldn't--I swear I wouldn't," promised the man with great earnestness.

"Ugh--very bad!" was the Indian woman's m.u.f.fled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as she peered out into the night. But she had promised her lover to come to him when supper was over, and she would not break faith with him even if it were at the peril of her life. The next moment she went out, as did the red light in the Girl's lantern hanging on a peg of the outer door.

"Oh, please, please," said the Girl, half-protestingly, half-willingly.

But the man was no longer to be denied; he kept on urging:

"One kiss, only one."