"Molly'll ride in with me," said Sandy. "I'm goin' over early on Pronto an' take the white blazed bay along that Molly rode over the Goats' Pass."
"Ride in?"
"She wrote she was jest waitin' fo' the minute she c'ud climb into a real saddle, astride a range-bred hawss," said Sandy.
"She won't be dressed for it, travelin' on the train," said Mirandy.
"I've got a hunch she will," Sandy answered simply. "They got their own private car. If she ain't, why, Sam can ride the bay back. But me an' Pronto, the bay an' Grit are goin' thataway."
There were certain tones of Sandy's voice that gave absolute finality to his statements. He used them on this occasion. The argument dropped. In a way Sandy was making the matter a test of Molly. If she was as anxious as she wrote to "fork a bronco," if she understood Sandy and he her, she would feel that he would be waiting with her mount for her to return to the ranch western fashion. If not, it meant that she was out of the chrysalis and had become, not the busy bee that belongs to the mesquite and the sage, but a gaudier, less responsible flutterer among eastern flower-beds.
The bay with the white blaze had been groomed by Sandy until his hide was glossy and rich as polished mahogany, while the blaze on his nose shone like a plate of silver. His dark mane and tail had been braided and combed until it crinkled proudly, the light shone from his curves as he moved, reflecting the sky in the high-lights. Hoofs had been oiled and Sandy had attended to his shoeing. The bay had been up for a month and fed until he was almost pampered, save that Sandy took the excess pepper out of him every morning.
A new saddle came from Cheyenne, most famous of all cities for making of saddles that are tailor-made, the leather carved cunningly into arabesques of cactus design, bossed and rimmed here and there with silver, the pattern carried over into the tapideros that hooded the stirrups, even into the bridle. It was a masterpiece of art craft, that saddle, "made for a lady to ride astride," and it cost Sandy an even quarter of a thousand dollars.
Sam and Mormon knew of the grooming of the horse but, when the saddle, cinched above a Navajo blanket, smote their vision, they blinked and complained. They too had gifts for the homecomer, but Sandy's outshone them as a newly minted five-dollar gold piece does a silver coin.
"If that don't win her to stay west there ain't no use a-tryin'," declared Sam as Sandy mounted and rode away, leading the bay. Grit, newly washed also, sorely against his will, since he did not know the occasion of the bath at the time of suffering it, went bounding on pads of rubber, leaping up, tearing ahead and back, a shuttling streak of gold and silver.