The healthful outdoor life, to which she took with avidity, had worked wonders for her really splendid and responsive constitution, and her normal great beauty had been freshened and intensified to a degree that made her conquest of the unsophisticated cowpunchers a thing of almost unenjoyable ease. With the single exception of Red, who loyally worshiped at the shrine of his first-loved divinity, every man for miles around did open and unblushing homage to the bewitching goddess, who found in their frank adoration a charm and satisfaction unknown to her previous inane piracies on the placid shallows of the social millpond. Out here on the high seas of unshackled independence, where every man was a viking in his own right and cruised with unbridled license through the deeps of his own will, each conquest was a victory to be written large on the tablet of her vanity. In her own land she had found many men who would languidly live for her favors; out here there was not one who would not eagerly die for the privilege of carrying out her most whimsical commands. And with womanly lack of philosophy she very much preferred those who would die to those who would live.
Under the jealous ministrations of her Centaur swains she had developed a great skill of horsewoman-ship, and in their company she and Grace Carter had ridden the range thoroughly, leaving not one point thereof unexplored. Each man vied with the other in the breaking of a safe mount for her, and tradition has it that there were more gentle horses on the range that year than had ever been known before on the whole western slope. These extended rides were a Godsend for Grace, diverting her mind from its cankering memories and bringing a new beauty to both face and figure, until at last the amorous cowpunchers were frankly divided as to the supremacy of the two women's respective charms. Red, alone, had no indecision, either in thought or strenuous expression on that point.
"Thu black ain't in thu runnin' with thu bay; an' she ain't in her class, nuther," had been his unequivocal opinion when approached on that topic. "Thu one's good enough to put yuh wad on fer a quick spurt, but yuh kin trus' yuah life on thu otheh. Thu filly fer me, every time." But then Red was in love, and that always has a strongly modifying influence on one's convictions. That he was nearly alone in his judgment may be ascribed to the difference of tastes. And it may be stated as a curious coincidence that most of the cowpunchers were blondes.