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.

Her father and mother knew her disposition, loved it, and feared for it.
They knew that there was never a rider so brave, so skilful, so strong,
but some outlaw would throw him at last. So at fourteen they sent her
east to a boarding-school. In two months she was back with a letter of
expulsion, and the boast of having blacked the eyes of the principal's