There was a little stir in the car, the engine had slowed down. Ruth opened her eyes; what had made her traveling companions' faces brighten with interest? Three or four of them rushed across the aisle and pressed their noses up against the window panes on her side of the coach. One man threw up the car window, leaned out and shouted: "Hurrah!" A woman waved her handkerchief.
Ruth's curiosity was aroused and she gazed languidly out her window. Flying along the road that followed the line of the track, was a Western pony. The horse was running like a streak, his nostrils quivering with excitement, his feet pounding along the hard sand.
"Beat it! beat it!" cried the excited stranger. "Did anybody ever see such riding before?" The man addressed the entire car.
Ruth could see that there was someone on the horse, running a race with the express train. The rider was in brown and Ruth could not observe very distinctly. She supposed that it was an Indian boy.
"That girl is a wonder!" the man exclaimed, who had been traveling next the prim young woman from the East for four days without daring to look straight at her. He leaned over his seat and smiled.
"Girl!" Miss Drew repeated in surprise. "Was the figure on horseback a girl?" Ruth was quite willing to admit that she had never seen such horsemanship in her life. The girl was perfectly graceful and at times she leaned over to urge her pony on, or bent sideways as though she swayed with the motion of the wind. She seemed to rest on her horse so lightly that she added no burden to him but was like the spirit of motion carrying him on.
The engine ahead whistled three times. The train was moving slowly, still it was remarkable how the rider kept up with the passenger coach.
Just as the car rolled into the station, the girl on horseback flashed a smile at the people watching her from the car windows, and Ruth had a brief glimpse of a shaft of sunlight caught in a mass of bright, bronze hair and a pair of radiant cheeks and eyes. Then she seized her suit case and umbrella, slipped into her overshoes and hurried out of the train. She had read that it rarely rained in Wyoming, except in the spring, but she wished to run no risk of taking cold.