The Man of the Forest - Zane Grey (white hot kiss txt) 📗

stone that an avalanche of a million years past had flung

from the rampart above to serve as camp-table and bench for

lovers in the wilderness; the sweet scent of spruce mingled

with the fragrance of wood-smoke blown in their faces. How

white the stars, and calm and true! How they blazed their

single task! A coyote yelped off on the south slope, dark

now as midnight. A bit of weathered rock rolled and tapped

from shelf to shelf. And the wind moaned. Helen felt all the

sadness and mystery and nobility of this lonely fastness,

and full on her heart rested the supreme consciousness that

all would some day be well with the troubled world beyond.

“Nell, I’ll homestead this park,” said Dale. “Then it’ll

always be ours.”

“Homestead! What’s that?” murmured Helen, dreamily. The word

sounded sweet.

“The government will give land to men who locate an’ build,”

replied Dale. “We’ll run up a log cabin.”

“And come here often… . Paradise Park!” whispered Helen.

Dale’s first kisses were on her lips then, hard and cool and

clean, like the life of the man, singularly exalting to her,

completing her woman’s strange and unutterable joy of the

hour, and rendering her mute.

Bo’s melodious laugh, and her voice with its old mockery of

torment, drifted softly on the night breeze. And the

cowboy’s “Aw, Bo,” drawling his reproach and longing, was

all that the tranquil, waiting silence needed.

Paradise Park was living again one of its romances. Love was

no stranger to that lonely fastness. Helen heard in the

whisper of the wind through the pine the old-earth story,

beautiful, ever new, and yet eternal. She thrilled to her

depths. The spar-pointed spruces stood up black and clear

against the noble stars. All that vast solitude breathed and

waited, charged full with its secret, ready to reveal itself

to her tremulous soul.