This watercolor study was produced at a time when Russell was creating a number of humorous illustrations to be made into postcards and reproductions for the tourist trade. This particular illustration, however, seems not to have been published. The subject shows one of Russell’s classic Montana cowboys standing on a boarded sidewalk, eyeing a haughty young female dressed in the fancy garments of the day. Near him, at the corner of a building, stands a young Indian woman with a papoose, holding a buffalo-horn hat rack in her hands. The Indian woman, on the other hand, wears a simple Pendleton blanket with a beaded baby strap typical of the reservation period.

The hat racks were made and sold as a tourist item. The old woman wrapped in a blanket standing just behind the Indian woman puts her hand to her chin and regards the white female who obviously has quickened her pace to get past people she views as inferior. Russell often poked fun at female vanity. “I know ladies if they’d shed to Eve’s garments that would stampede town broke horses; but see them at a party and they come up like a Brazilian butterfly, and hubby at her side looks like a road ranch bed bug.” The cowboy—perhaps a personification of the artist—seems to eye the haughty beauty with a knowing, wry smirk.