A wave of indignation swept over Bowles. He remembered those graceless "boys" roasting eggs by the fire at night, and he thought how little they deserved her kindness; but all he did was to murmur his appreciation. At this the lady looked at him again, like one who knows her own kind, and her voice was very pleasant as she said:
"Oh, you are the young man that rode Wa-ha-lote this morning, aren't you? Ah, he is such a beautiful horse!" She came over and stroked his neck thoughtfully while Bowles stood by his head and smiled. "Don't you know," she said, "I have always claimed that a horse could be conquered by kindness. And I'm so glad!" she murmured, with a confidential touch of the hand. "Won't you come up to the house, and I'll give you that lump of sugar."
CHAPTER VII
THE QUEEN AT HOME
The Bat Wing ranch, with its big white house on the hill, its whirling windmill, its tank that spread out like a lake and gleamed like liquid silver, its pole corrals, its adobe houses half shaded by wind-tossed cottonwoods, was one of the most sightly in Arizona. The yellow-white sheen of the bunch grass made the distance seem fair and inviting; at sunset the saw-toothed summits of the Tortugas changed to blues and purples and mysterious, cañon-deep black; the heavy bunches of sacaton out in the horse pasture gleamed white in the evening glow. Many riders passed by that way, rigged out in the finery of their kind, and most of them took it all in—and yet, at times, the place looked kind of bare and tame.
Bowles was a stranger to those parts and he admired the landscape mightily; but to him too it seemed a little bare. It needed a dash of color, a vigorous girlish figure in the foreground, to give it the last vivid touch. But the queen, of course, must be humored—let the picture wait! So Bowles waited, along with the rest of the bunch, and in the evening while they were at their supper the Queen of the Bat Wing came. At the Wordsworth Society she had been stunningly gowned in a creation which Bowles would not soon forget; on the train she had worn a tailored traveling dress, very severe and becoming, the only note of defiance being in the hat, which was her Western sombrero with a veil to take off the curse. But now the trimming was gone, and a silver-buckled, horsehair band took its place. Dixie May was back on her own range and she wore what clothes she pleased!
First there was the hat, a trim, fifteen-dollar Stetson held on by a strap that lapped behind; then a white shirt-waist to supply the touch of color; a divided skirt of golden-brown corduroy; and high-heeled cowboy boots, very tiny, and supplied with silver-mounted spurs, ornate with Mexican conchos. She wore a quirt on her wrist, and her hair in Indian braids, and a fine coat of newly acquired tan on her cheeks.
A silence fell on the squatting punchers as she ran lightly down from the house; one or two of them ducked out of sight as she passed through the gate, but the rest sat motionless, stoically feeding themselves with their knives, and waiting for the queen to pass. Only Bowles, the man from the East, rose up and took off his hat; but Dixie Lee remembered her promise, and never so much as looked at him.