"Not many women'd tackle that," Dick said quietly, as Mountain Lad, easily retaining his horizontal position once it had been attained, swam to the lower end of the tank and floundered up the rough slope to the anxious cowboy.
The latter swiftly adjusted the halter with a turn of chain between the jaws. But Paula, still astride, leaned forward, imperiously took the lead-part from the cowboy, whirled Mountain Lad around to face Forrest, and saluted.
"Now you will have to go away," she called. "This is our hen party, and the stag public is not admitted."
Dick laughed, saluted acknowledgment, and led the way back through the lilacs to the road.
"Who ... who was it?" Graham queried.
"Paula--Mrs. Forrest--the boy girl, the child that never grew up, the grittiest puff of rose-dust that was ever woman."
"My breath is quite taken away," Graham said. "Do your people do such stunts frequently?"
"First time she ever did that," Forrest replied. "That was Mountain Lad. She rode him straight down the spill-way--tobogganed with him, twenty-two hundred and forty pounds of him."
"Risked his neck and legs as well as her own," was Graham's comment.
"Thirty-five thousand dollars' worth of neck and legs," Dick smiled. "That's what a pool of breeders offered me for him last year after he'd cleaned up the Coast with his get as well as himself. And as for Paula, she could break necks and legs at that price every day in the year until I went broke--only she doesn't. She never has accidents."
"I wouldn't have given tuppence for her chance if he'd turned over."
"But he didn't," Dick answered placidly. "That's Paula's luck. She's tough to kill. Why, I've had her under shell-fire where she was actually disappointed because she didn't get hit, or killed, or near- killed. Four batteries opened on us, shrapnel, at mile-range, and we had to cover half a mile of smooth hill-brow for shelter. I really felt I was justified in charging her with holding back. She did admit a 'trifle.' We've been married ten or a dozen years now, and, d'ye know, sometimes it seems to me I don't know her at all, and that nobody knows her, and that she doesn't know herself--just the same way as you and I can look at ourselves in a mirror and wonder who the devil we are anyway. Paula and I have one magic formula: Damn the expense when fun is selling. And it doesn't matter whether the price is in dollars, hide, or life. It's our way and our luck. It works. And, d'ye know, we've never been gouged on the price yet."