Читать книгу Nameless River онлайн

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Then she untied the slatted bonnet and took it off, carrying it in her hand as she swung away with her team at her heels, and the change was marvelous. Where had been a somewhat masculine figure, plodding at man’s work a few moments before, was now a young goddess striding the virgin earth.

The rose glow of coming twilight in the mountains bathed the stern slants with magic, fell on her bronze head like ethereal dust of gems. All in a moment she had become beautiful. The golden shade of her smooth skin was put a tint above that of her hair and brows and lashes, a blend to delight an artist, so rare was it—though her mother said they were “all off the same piece.” There was red in her makeup, too, faint, thinned, beneath the light tan of her cheeks, flaming forth brightly in the even line of her full lips.

Out of this flare of noon-day color her blue eyes shone like calm waters under summer skies. Some of the men of the country had seen John Allison’s daughter, but not one of them would have told you she was handsome—for not one of them had seen her without the disfiguring shelter of the bonnet. She went with the weary horses to the edge of the river, flat here in the broad meadows, and stood between them as they drank.