one law that may be stated in a line, and perhaps learned in a dozen
years,--be a part of the horse.

The mastery of an art--be it what you like--does but consist in the
comprehension of its basic law. The appreciation of this truth is
indispensable. It cannot avail to ape the manner of the initiate. I have
seen dapper youths booted and spurred, riding horses in the park, rising
to the trot and holding the ball of the foot just so on the iron of the
stirrup, and if the horse had bent his body they would have gone
sprawling into the bramble bushes. Yet these youngsters believed that
they were riding like her Majesty's cavalry, the ogled gallants of every
strolling lass.

I have seen begloved clubmen with an English accent worrying a good
horse that they understood about as well as a problem in mechanics or
any line of Horace. And I have seen my lady sitting a splendid mount,
with the reins caught properly in her fingers and her back as straight
as a whip-staff, and I would have wagered my life that every muscle in
her little body was as rigid as a rock, and her knee as numb as the
conscience of a therapeutist.

Look, if you please, at the mud-stained cavalryman who has lived his
days and his nights in the saddle; or the cattle drover who has never
had any home but this pigskin seat, and mark you what a part of the
horse he is. Hark back to these models when you are listening to the
vapourings of a riding-master lately expatriated from the stables of Sir
Henry. To ride well is to recreate the fabulous centaur of Thessaly.

We raced over the mile of sand road in fewer minutes than it takes to
write it down here. There was another factor, new come into the problem,
and we meant to follow it close. Expedition has not been too highly
sung. An esoteric novelist hath it that a pigmy is as good as a giant if
he arrive in time.

At the end of this mile, below Horton's Ferry, the road forks, and there
stands a white signboard with its arms crossed, proclaiming the ways to
the travelling stranger. The cattle Ward had bought were in two droves.
Four hundred were on the lands of Nicholas Marsh, perhaps three miles
farther down the Valley River, and the remaining two hundred a mile or
two south of the crossroads at David Westfall's.

Ump swung his horse around in the road at the forks. "Boys," he said,
"we'll have to divide up. I'll go over to old Westfall's, an' you bring
up the other cattle. I'll make King David help to the fo