But
she was sure if she ever could rig herself up like that, she would look
like a dream, and she really envied the cowgirls, who leaped head first
from the saddle but always landed right side up.
People of another world, well, yes. But there are ways of getting
together.
Connie talked very little that first afternoon. She watched the people
around her, and listened as they discussed the points of the horses,
the cowgirls and the jockeys with equal impartiality. She heard their
bets, their guttural grunts of disapproval with the judges' decisions,
their roars of satisfaction when the right horse won. She watched the
cowgirls, walking unconcernedly about the ring, flapping their
riding-whips against their leather boots. She watched the lithe-limbed
cowboys slouching not ungracefully around the nervous ponies, waving
their hats in greeting to their friends, calling loud jests to their
fellows in the cowboy band. How strange they were, how startlingly
human, and yet how thousand-miles removed.
Connie rebelled against it. They were folks. And so was Connie. The
thousand miles was a barrier, an injustice. In order to handle
literary material, she must get within touching distance of it. All
those notes she had collected so painstakingly were cold, inanimate.
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