They talked of the cattle stampede in which several of the outfits had been heavy losers.  Some nine hundred head of cattle had been recovered, and members of the different outfits were still scouring the Red Desert for strays.

Something in the nature of a sensation was created by the arrival of the Wetmore party.  The women were frankly interested in the clothes, bearing, and general deportment of the New-Yorkers.  Rumors of Miss Colebrooke’s beauty were rife, and there was a general inclination to compare her with local belles.  Such exotic types—­they had seen these city beauties before—­ were as a rule too colorless for their appreciation.  They liked faces that had “more go to them,” was the verdict passed upon one famous beauty who had visited the Wetmores the year before.  In arrangement of the hair, perhaps, in matters of dress, the judges were willing to concede the laurels to city damsels, but there concession stopped.  But evidently Kitty, to judge from the elaboration of her toilet, did not intend to be dismissed thus cursorily.  She herself was delicately, palely pretty, as always, but her hair was tortured to a fashionable fluffiness, and the simplicity of her green muslin gown was only in the name.  It was muslin disguised, elaborated, beribboned, lace-trimmed till its identity was all but lost in the multitude of pretty complications.

“Did you know that old Ma’am Yellett had a school-marm up to her place?” asked one of the men, apropos of Eastern prettiness.

“Well, well,” Costigan reminisced, “’tis some av thim Yillitt lambs thot’s six fut in their shtockings, if Oi be rimimbering right.  Sure, the tacher ought to be something av a pugilist, Oi’m thinkin’.”

“I seen her the other day, and a neater little heifer never turned out to pasture.  Lord, I’d like to be gnawing the corners of the primer right now, if she was there to whale the ruler.”

“Arrah,” bayed Costigan, “but the women question is gittin’ complicated ontoirely, wid Miss Rodney—­an’ herself lukin’ loike a saint in a church window—­dalin’ the mails an’ th’ other wan tachin’ in the mountains.  Sure, this place is gittin’ to be but a sorry shpot for bachelors loike mesilf.”

“I ain’t mentionin’ no names, but there’s a man here ain’t treatin’ a mighty fine woman square and accordin’ to the way she ought to be treated.”

The information ran through the circle like an electric shock.  Men stopped in the act of pledging each other’s healths to listen.  Loungers straightened up; every topic was dropped.  The man who had made the statement was the loose-lipped busybody who had suggested to his host that he give up his six-shooter since there were “ladies present.”

“What the hell are you waiting for?” queried Texas Tyler, savagely.  “You’ve cracked your whip, made your bow, and got our attention; why the hell don’t you go on?”