That first supper was a wonderful meal to her, too, with a lot of tall men trooping in to sit at the board. Their bronzed faces, their keen, forth-looking eyes, used to search great levels, the air of individuality, of independence, laid powerful hold on the child’s fancy. Every time a spur jingled beneath the table, or one of those big voices boomed out suddenly, her heart leaped in swift though uncomprehending response.
Afterward, in the living-room, she heard with some anxiety, Pearsall doubtfully suggest to her father that they might want to build a separate mess house for the men. Her father said no, he didn’t mind the men at the table; and Hilda heaved a great sigh of relief. She had already struck up quite a friendship with blond, talkative Shorty O’Meara; she had even made some timid overtures to a lank, elderly cynic who lived up to the name of Old Snake Thompson. To have her social adventures in this direction curtailed would have been trying.
The days that followed the arrival were strange, interesting ones. Her father was wrapped in an obscurity of dejection and grief; Miss Van Brunt was a victim of neuralgia which she declared the plains wind had developed. The child had only the baby brother, with the occasional companionship of Uncle Hank and some of the younger cowboys; yet she made eager acquaintance with this new life; and it was to the old man she came for information or to share with him her joys.
“All the horses you ride are yellow ones, Uncle Hank, aren’t they?” she asked him one evening when he came in from the range.
“Yes, honey, I’ve rode a buckskin pony for a good many years. I reckon the folks wouldn’t hardly know me on any other color of hoss. I sort of think they’re becoming to me—don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, very,” Hilda assured him gravely. “What’s this one’s name?”
“Why, you see, I just call ’em all ‘Buckskin.’ It’s easiest.”
Sometimes he took her out for short rides, of an evening, holding her before him on the saddle of the tall buckskin horse with a blaze face, or the little dark buckskin pony that had a brown mane and tail. Traveling in this fashion one evening across pastures she pointed to a queer, humped object, sway-backed, with a ewe-neck, and a rough coat of brindled hair that stuck up like the nap on a half-worn rug.
“What’s that, Uncle Hank? It looks something like a calf.”
“’S a dogie, honey,” he explained, absently.