e, "ye'll not ask me to
do that."

"What's gone o' ye, Jeff?" said his aunt lugubriously; "ye ain't nat'ral
like."

Jeff laughed. "See here, aunty; I'm goin' to take your advice. You know
Rabbit?"

"The mare?"

"Yes; I'm going to sell her. The blacksmith offered me a hundred dollars
for her last week."

"Ef ye'd done that a month ago, Jeff, ez I wanted ye to, instead o'
keeping the brute to eat ye out o' house and home, ye'd be better off."
Aunt Sally never let slip an opportunity to "improve the occasion," but
preferred to exhort over the prostrate body of the "improved." "Well, I
hope he mayn't change his mind."

Jeff smiled at such suggestion regarding the best horse within fifty
miles of the "Half-way House." Nevertheless he went briskly to the
stable, led out and saddled a handsome grey mare, petting her the while,
and keeping up a running commentary of caressing epithets to which
Rabbit responded with a whinny and playful reaches after Jeff's red
flannel sleeve. Whereat Jeff, having loved the horse until it was
displaced by another mistress, grew grave and suddenly threw his arms
around Rabbit's neck, and then taking Rabbit's nose, thrust it in the
bosom of his shirt and held it there silently for a moment. Rabbit
becoming uneasy, Jeff's mood changed too, and having caparisoned himself
and charger in true vaquero style, not without a little Mexican dandyism
as to the set of his doeskin trousers, and the tie of his red sash, put
a sombrero rakishly on his curls and leaped into the saddle.

Jeff was a fair rider in a country where riding was understood as a
natural instinct, and not as a purely artificial habit of horse and
rider, consequently he was not perched up, jockey fashion, with a
knee-grip for his body, and a rein-rest for his arms on the beast's
mouth, but rode with long, loose stirrups, his legs clasping the barrel
of his horse, his single rein lying loose upon her neck, leaving her
head free as the wind. After this fashion he had often emerged from a
cloud of dust on the red mountain road, striking admiration into the
hearts of the wayfarers and coach-passengers, and leaving a trail
of pleasant incense in the dust behind him. It was therefore with
considerable confidence in himself, and a little human vanity, that he
dashed round the house, and threw his mare skilfully on her haunches
exactly a foot before Miss Mayfield--himself a resplendent vision of
flying riata, crimson scarf, fawn-colored