The Long Chance by Kyne, Peter B. (Peter Bernard), 1880-1957

The last week of Bob's stay at the Hat Ranch, under the chaperonage of the nurse, was not spent in planning for the future, for the lovers did not look beyond the reality of their new-found happiness. True, Bob had tried it once or twice, during the long hot days in the patio while waiting for Donna to return from her work, but the knowledge of his inability to support a wife, the present desperate condition of his finances and the unsettled state of his future plans, promptly saturated his soul in a melancholy which only the arrival of Donna could dissipate. As for Donna, like most women, she was content to linger in that delightful state of bliss which precedes marriage. Never having known real happiness before, she was, for the present at least, incapable of imagining a more profound joy than walking arm in arm in the moonlit patio with the man she loved. Without the adobe walls, the zephyr lashed the sage and whirled the sand with fiendish disregard of human happiness, but within the Hat Ranch enclosure Donna Corblay knew that she had found a paradise, and she was content.

CHAPTER VIII

Donna's mail-order library proved a great source of comfort to Bob during the lonely days at the Hat Ranch. At night she sang to him, or sat contentedly at his side while he told her whimsical tales of his wanderings. He was an easy, natural conversationalist, the kind of a man who "listens" well--an optimist, a dreamer. He was, seemingly, possessed of a fund of unfailing good-nature, and despite the fact that the past seven years of his life had been spent far from that civilization in which he had grown to manhood, in unconventional, occasionally sordid surroundings, he had lost none of an innate gentleness with women, that delicate attention to the little, thoughtful, chivalrous things which, to discerning women, are the chief charm in a man. And withal he was a droll rascal, a rollicking, careless fellow who quickly discovered that, next to telling her that he loved her and would continue to love her forever and ever, it pleased Donna most to have him tell her about himself, to listen to his Munchausenian tales of travel and adventure. Did he speak of cities with their cafes, parks, theaters and museums, she was interested, but when he told her of the country that lay just beyond the ranges, east and west, or described the long valley to the north, rolling gradually up to the high Sierra, with their castellated spires, sparkling and snow-encrusted; of little mountain lakes, mirroring the firs of the heights above them, of meadows and running water and birds and blossoms, he could almost see the desert sadness die out in her eyes, as she trailed him in spirit through this marvelous land of her heart's desire.

"When we're married, Donna," he told her, when there came to him for the first time a realization of the hunger in the girl's heart for a change from the drab, lifeless, unchanging vistas of the open desert, "we'll take horses and pack-animals and go up into that wonderful country on our honeymoon."

She turned to him with glistening eyes, seized his hand and pressed it to her cheek.

"How soon?" she murmured.