Where the creek trail crossed the Big Hill and then swung to the left that it might follow the easy slopes of Cedar Creek, Blue turned off to the right of his own accord, as if he took it for granted that his lady would return the way she had come. His lady had not thought anything about it, but after a brief hesitation she decided that Blue should have his way; after all, it would simplify her explanations of the long ride if she came home by way of the canyon. She could say that she had ridden farther out into the hills than usual, which was true enough.
Billy Louise did not own such a breeder of blues as a lazy liver, her nerves were in fine working order, and her digestion was perfect; and it is a well-known fact that a trouble must be born of reality rather than imagination, if it would ride far behind the cantle. Billy Louise was late, and already the shadows lay like long draperies upon the hills she faced: long, purple cloaks ruffed with golden yellow and patterned with indigo patches, which were the pines, and splotches of dark green, which were the thickets of alder and quaking aspens. She couldn't feel depressed for very long, and before she had climbed over the first rugged ridge that reached out like a crooked finger into the narrow valley, she was humming under her breath and riding with the reins dropped loose upon Blue's neck, so that he went where the way pleased him best. Before she was down that ridge and beginning to climb the next, she was singing softly a song her mother had taught her long ago, when she was seven or so: "The years creep slowly by, Lorena, The snow is on the grass again; The sun's low down the sky, Lorena--"
Blue gathered himself together and jumped a washout three feet across and goodness knows how deep and jarred that melancholy melody quite out of Billy Louise's mind. When she had settled herself again to the slow climb, she broke out with what she called Ward's Come-all-ye, and with a twinkle of eye and both dimples showing deep, went on with a very slight interruption in her singing.
"'Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle'--that's you Blue. You don't amount to nothing nohow, doing jackrabbit stunts like that when I'm not looking! 'Coma ti yi youpy, youpy-a.'" She watched a cloud shadow sweep like a great bird over a sunny slope and murmured while she watched: "Cloud-boats sailing sunny seas--is that original, or have I cribbed it from some honest-to-goodness poet? Blue, if fate hadn't made a cowpuncher of me, I'd be chewing up lead-pencils trying to find a rhyme for alfalfa, maybe. And where would you be, you old skate? If the Louise of me had been developed at the expense of the Billy of me, and I'd taken to making battenburg doilies with butterflies in the corners, and embroidering corset covers till I put my eyes out, and writing poetry on Sundays when mommie wouldn't let me sew. I wonder if Ward-- Maybe he'd have liked me better if I'd lived up to the Louise and cut out the Billy part. I'd be home, right now, asking mommie whether I should use soda or baking-powder to make my muffins with-- Oh, gracious!" She leaned over and caught a handful of Blue's slatey mane and tousled it, till he laid his ears flat on his head and nipped his nose around to show her that his teeth were bared to the gums. Billy Louise laughed and gave another yank.