stopped short in a full gallop; as a bit of staccato equestrianism it was
superb.

And then the wherefore of all this dashing horsemanship, this curveting,
prancing, galloping revival of knightly tourney effects was
apparent—Judith Rodney had opened post-office. She had changed her riding
clothes; or, rather, that portion of them to which the ladies took
exception was now concealed by a long, black skirt. Her wonderful braids
of black hair had been twisted high on her head. She was well worth a trip
across the alkali wastes to see. The room was packed with men. One
unconsciously got the impression that a fire, a fight, or some
crowd-collecting casualty had happened. Above the continual clinking of
spurs there arose every idiom and peculiarity of speech of which these
United States are capable. There is no Western dialect, properly speaking.
Men bring their modes of expression with them from Maine or Minnesota, as
the case may be, but their figures of speech, which give an essential
picturesqueness to their language, are almost entirely local—the cattle
and sheep industries, prospecting, the Indians, poker, faro, the
dance-halls, all contribute their printable or unprintable embellishment.

Judith managed them all—cow-punchers, sheep-herders, prospectors,
freighters—with an impersonal skill that suggested a little solitary
exercise in the bowling-alley. The ten-pins took their tumbles in good
part—no one could congratulate himself on escaping the levelling ball—and
where there’s a universal lack of luck, doubtless also there will be found
a sort of grim fellowship.

That they were all more or less in love with her there could be no doubt.
As a matter of fact, Judith Rodney did not depend on the scarcity of women
in the desert for her pre-eminence in the interests of this hot-headed