ound the flanks of one of her kind like that? If she
had hit you, it would have been all day with you."

Phil pulled himself together.

"Do you think so?" he remarked in a much more casual tone than he
felt.

"It looked for a minute like a bad accident."

"It looked to me like attempted murder," retorted Phil.

Brenchfield frowned, but ignored the opening.

"She's a vicious devil. She takes turns like that occasionally when a
stranger is near her."

"You mean _you_ give her turns like that occasionally?" put in Phil
suggestively.

At that moment, Jim Langford sauntered round the smithy building into
the yard.

"Hullo! A love-feast going on! What's the argument, fellows? What have
you been doing to your cheek, Phil?"

The Mayor growled.

"This blacksmith pal of yours thought he could shoe Beelzebub. She's
got a mad streak on and pretty nearly laid him out. Now he blames me
for rousing her, as if she needs any rousing."

"And so you did! I'm not blind or deaf. I saw you and heard you as
well."

Brenchfield laughed and tapped his forehead significantly to Langford.
But Langford did not respond.

"You mean, Phil, that the Mayor knows what they call 'the horse
word'?"

"He seems to possess _one_ of them, at any rate," replied Phil.

"So there are two of them?" laughed Jim.

"There ought to be, if there are any at all;--just as there is hot
and cold, day and night, right and wrong, good and bad, positive and
negative."

"That sounds reasonable enough, too," answered Jim, who turned
suddenly to Brenchfield as the latter was frantically endeavouring to
quiet the plunging Beelzebub.

"Now then, for the land's sake, Graham Brenchfield _Lavengro_, why
don't you use that other word? What's the good of creating a devil if
you can't keep the curb on him?"

Brenchfield commenced to belabour the horse in his irritation, but the
more he struck the more nervous and vicious she seemed to grow.

The sight set Phil's thoughts awandering. A little door in his brain
opened and he remembered the queer little wizened-faced horse rustler
in for life at Ukalla Jail, whom he had befriended and who in return
had given him a word which he said might be useful some day, as it was
guaranteed to quiet the wildest horses. At the time, he had grinned at
it in his incredulity, but now the thought came, "What if there might
be something in it?"

He had not noted that little word, and now he had a difficulty in
recalling it.