She would have recognized him from the way he rode, if she had not known the slim, erect figure.

The cowboy saw her instantly.

He pulled the mustang, about to plunge down the slope, and lifted him, rearing and wheeling.

Then Columbine waved her hand.

The cowboy spurred his horse along the crest of the ridge, disappeared behind the grove of aspens, and came in sight again around to the right, where on the grassy bench he slowed to a walk in descent to the bluff.
The girl watched him come, conscious of an unfamiliar sense of uncertainty in this meeting, and of the fact that she was seeing him differently from any other time in the years he had been a playmate, a friend, almost like a brother.