“Good for you, Mother!” the girl exclaimed, throwing an arm about her neck and planking a firm kiss on her forehead. “That was a solar plexus. Now I’ll try to be good and wear a feather only here and there. But Mr. Transley has nothing to do with it.”
“Of course not,” said Y.D. “Still, Transley is a man with snap in him. That’s why he’s boss. So many of these ornery good-for-nothin’s is always wishin’ they was boss, but they ain’t willin’ to pay the price. It costs somethin’ to get to the head of the herd—an’ stay there.”
“He seems firm on all fours,” the girl agreed. “How do we travel, and when?”
“Better take a democrat, I guess,” her father said. “We can throw in a tent and some bedding for you, as we’ll maybe stay over a couple of nights.”
“The blue sky is tent enough for me,” Zen protested, “and I can surely rustle a blanket or two around the camp. Besides, I’ll want a riding horse to get around with there.”
“You can run him beside the democrat,” said her father. “You’re gettin’ too big to go campin’ promisc’us like when you was a kid.”
“That’s the penalty for growing up,” Zen sighed. “All right, Dad. Say two o’clock?”
The girl spent the morning helping her mother about the house, and casting over in her mind the probable developments of the near future. She would not have confessed outwardly to even a casual interest in Transley, but inwardly she admitted that the promise of another meeting with him gave zest to the prospect. Transley was interesting. At least he was out of the commonplace. His bold directness had rather fascinated her. He had a will. Her father had always admired men with a will, and Zen shared his admiration. Then there was Linder. The fierce light of Transley’s charms did not blind her to the glow of quiet capability which she saw in Linder. If one were looking for a husband, Linder had much to recommend him. He was probably less capable than Transley, but he would be easier to manage.... But who was looking for a husband? Not Zen. No, no, certainly not Zen.
Then there was George Drazk, whose devotions fluctuated between “that Pete-horse” and the latest female to cross his orbit. At the thought of George Drazk Zen laughed outright. She had played with him. She had made a monkey of him, and he deserved all he had got. It was not the first occasion upon which Zen had let herself drift with the tide, always sure of justifying herself and discomfiting someone by the swift, strong strokes with which, at the right moment, she reached the shore. Zen liked to think of herself as careering through life in the same way as she rode the half-broken horses of her father’s range. How many such a horse had thought that the lithe body on his back was something to race with, toy with, and, when tired of that, fling precipitately to earth! And not one of those horses but had found that while he might race and toy with his rider within limitations, at the last that light body was master, and not he.... Yet Zen loved best the horse that raced wildest and was hardest to bring into subjection.
That was her philosophy of life so far as a girl of twenty may have a philosophy of life. It was to go on and see what would happen, supported always by a quiet confidence that in any pinch she could take care of herself. She had learned to ride and shoot, to sleep out and cook in the open, to ride the ranges after dark by instinct and the stars—she had learned these things while other girls of her age learned the rudiments of fancy-work and the scales of the piano.