Page:The Trail Rider (1924).pdf/40

 mother-of-pearl buttons down the legs. She wore no spurs; her tawny, weathered hat was weighted by a heavy leather band.

The sun had turned to a reddish tint the ends and light-flying tresses of her heavy, brown hair and had set its little brown pigment spots in her fine-textured skin, like marks of kisses from the lips of an ardent lover. Her eyes were as brown as walnut, and sorrowful as a Madonna's, but in the sorrow of innocence, whose only grief is for a dream.

She saw Uncle Boley up there among the great crowd, and smiled. Texas felt a quiver leap through his body at the sight of her quickened face, as if she had come and laid her hand on his head. It was just like that, he thought; just exactly as if she had come and laid her hand on his bare head. And her smile was not for him at all; as far as he was concerned, her world was empty of men. But if a smile going over a man's head could make him quiver and tingle like that, how would he feel if she gave it to him, right square in the eyes?

That was what Texas wondered, the velvet lady in her glory dim in his thoughts that moment, as Sallie McCoy's name was announced by the man with the megaphone and the gate was opened to the wildest steer on the waiting list.

It was a white animal with a blotch of red across