as kin to the one he had seen when she smiled from the back of the
stallion. When she started forward, he could not fail to see the
inimitable way she carried the cling and weight of her draperies with
her knees--round knees, he knew, that he had seen press desperately
into the round muscle-pads of Mountain Lad. Graham observed, also,
that she neither wore nor needed corseting. Nor could he fail, as she
crossed the floor, to see two women: one, the grand lady, the mistress
of the Big House; one, the lovely equestrienne statue beneath the
dull-blue, golden-trimmed gown, that no gowning could ever make his
memory forget.

She was upon them, among them, and Graham's hand held hers in the
formal introduction as he was made welcome to the Big House and all
the hacienda in a voice that he knew was a singing voice and that
could proceed only from a throat that pillared, such as hers, from a
chest deep as hers despite her smallness.

At table, across the corner from her, he could not help a
surreptitious studying of her. While he held his own in the general
fun and foolishness, it was his hostess that mostly filled the circle
of his eye and the content of his mind.

It was as bizarre a company as Graham had ever sat down to dinner
with. The sheep-buyer and the correspondent for the _Breeders'
Gazette_ were still guests. Three machine-loads of men, women, and
girls, totaling fourteen, had arrived shortly before the first gong
and had remained to ride home in the moonlight. Graham could not
remember their names; but he made out that they came from some valley
town thirty miles away called Wickenberg, and that they were of the
small-town banking, professional, and wealthy-farmer class. They were