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8 VAL OF PARADISE

her hat toward the nearest corner, her kerchief after it, she was a sight to dwarf the beauty of all Paradise and its possessions, for she was beauty incarnate, the heart and soul and pulse of it. She was tall and strong and slender, straight as a lance in rest and pliant as a willow. Her face was oval, with a well-set chin above her pretty throat, and the sunsets of the mesas shone through her soft dark skin. Her hair was black and running with loose waves, like a gentle sea in the sun, and her eyes were like her father's, dark and swiftly changeable. They were long eyes, slumbrous at times and full of tenderness for every living creature, but they could widen and flash upon occasion.

She was born to the open as the winds to the levels, the white clouds to the sky. Hour by hour she rode in the great spaces of the plains, drowsed beneath the shadow of some weathered shaft of the red stone of the region, and dreamed the dreams of girlhood.

And Val on Redstar was the prize, the crown of Paradise, the imperial sovereign before whom the whole ranch bowed in adoration—but the sweetest, kindest, simplest ruler that ever sat a throne.

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