She smiled again and impulsively reached her hand to him, and as he took it he was nearly won by her friendliness. This she did not know, and he was able to go out into the street alone. He could not but observe that the attendants treated him with added respect by reason of his acquaintance with the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the camp. She had made his loneliness very keen and hard to bear.
As he walked down the street he thought of Mary—she seemed to be a sister to the distant, calm and glorious moon just launching into the sky above the serrate wall of snowy peaks to the East. There was a powerful appeal in the vivid and changeful woman he had just met, for her like had never touched his life before.
As he climbed back up the hill toward the corral where he had left his horse, he was filled with a wordless disgust of the town and its people. The night was still and cool, almost frosty. The air so clear and so rare filled his lungs with wholesomely sweet and reanimating breath. His head cleared, and his heart grew regular in its beating. The moon was sailing in mid-ocean, between the Great Divide and the Christo Range, cold and sharp of outline as a boat of silver. Lizard Head to the south loomed up ethereal as a cloud, so high it seemed to crash among the stars. The youth drew a deep breath and said: "To hell with the town."
Kintuck whinnied caressingly as he heard his master's voice. After putting some grain before the horse, Mose rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep with only a passing thought of the princess, her luxurious home, and her radiant and inscrutable personality.
CHAPTER XVI
AGAIN ON THE ROUND-UP
It was good to hear again the bawling of the bulls and the shouts of the cowboys, and to see the swirling herd and the flying, guarding, checking horsemen. Mose, wearied, weather-beaten, and somber-visaged, looked down upon the scene with musing eyes. The action was quite like that on the Arickaree; the setting alone was different. Here the valley was a wide, deliciously green bowl, with knobby hills, pine-covered and abrupt, rising on all sides. Farther back great snow-covered peaks rose to enormous heights. In the center of this superb basin the camps were pitched, and the roping and branding went on like the action of a prodigious drama. The sun, setting in orange-colored clouds, brought out the velvet green of the sward with marvelous radiance. The tents gleamed in the midst of the valley like flakes of pearl.
The heart of the wanderer warmed within him, and with a feeling that he was almost home he called to his pack horse "Hy-ak-boy!" and started down the hill. As he drew near the herd he noted the great changes which had come over the cattle. They were now nearly all grades of Hereford or Holstein. They were larger of body, heavier of limb, and less active than the range cattle of the plains, but were sufficiently speedy to make handling them a fine art.