Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/117

Rh having graduated young from college; but, as is often the case with New York raised; youth, gave an appearance of being older. The young life of the place absorbed him. He was good at sports, and this was essentially an out-of-door existence. His riding school instruction stood him in good stead, although he had a great deal to re-learn. At first he was inclined to be scornful of stock saddles and long straight stirrups immediately under the body, of spade bits and the loose swinging rein, simply because he had been taught on an English saddle and with curb and snaffle rigging. But after he had ridden a few trails, and especially after his first hard all-day expedition, he began to discover that these things had a logic back of them. As they were also exotic and picturesque Kenneth naturally swung to the other extreme and became intensely partisan of all western gear. He also swam well and played a decent game of tennis. But his chief asset was his eager ready zest for everything.

A party of young people rode every morning, and gathered at the Fremont as a rendezvous. Kenneth had already met them at the barbecue. It was a small group, this, and kept itself to itself. There were always a few newcomers hanging about its fringes, but they rarely lasted long enough to gain an intimacy. These youngsters had been brought up on horseback, and they were little inclined to tolerate any lack of skill or determination. Indeed one of the first things they ordinarily did to a stranger was to take him at once up a peculiarly atrocious slide rock on the Arroyo Pinto trail, named Slippery Sal. If he took that smiling, they came home down the narrow way on the full trot, plunging down the almost perpendicular mountain side in short-cuts across the angles or lacets of the trail.

There were in this group three boys and four girls, all of an age. The boys, naturally, seemed much younger, were hobble-de-hoys, with the amusing admixture of boyish diffidences or crudenesses and a pseudo-manly ease. It was very evident that they were considered as mere children, useful at times, by the young ladies, their sisters, who at eighteen were in their own opinions quite grown-up and important. Kenneth agreed with them and found them charming. There were Dora Stanley, Myra Welch, and Isabelle Carson, with brothers Martin, Stanley,