Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/197

 whiteness that might never have known the sunshine. Her feet were conspicuously small, her hands white, perfectly kept and helpless. Nature had given her the bronze hair that dyers strive for, and her brown eyes corresponded. She was as unlike the other alert self-sufficient young persons of the "millionaire bunch"— who were either dressed for utilitarian purposes only, or in finery of a past mode as could well be imagined.

Miss Rathburn had managed to remain immaculate, while their faces were smudged and streaked with soot and car dust, their hats awry and hair dishevelled. Cool, serene, with a filmy veil thrown back from her hat brim, she rocked idly, utterly unconscious of the eyes of the populace.

"The scenery is grand — Wagnerian! Out here one forgets one's ego, doesn't one?" the lady in the Alpine hat was saying when, leading the party like a bewhiskered gander, the gentleman from Canton, Ohio, dashed to the end of the veranda with his camera ready for action.

"What a picturesque character!" she cried ecstatically, following. "And see how beau-tee-fully she manages those horses!"

The cameras clicked as a young woman sitting very erect on the high spring seat of a wagon and looking straight ahead of her came past the hotel at a brisk trot, holding the reins over four spirited horses.

Disston straightened and asked quickly:

"Who's that, Jap ? It looks like— "

"Mormon Joe's Kate," Toomey finished. His tone had a sneer in it. "You were very good friends when you left, I remember."

The eyes of both Mrs. Rathburn and her daughter showed surprise when Disston colored.