rks."

"What about Twiggs?" said I.

"To hell with Twiggs," said he. "If he gits in your way, throat him."
Then he clucked to the Bay Eagle and rode over the hill, his humped back
rising and falling with the gallop of the mare.

We slapped the reins on our horses' necks and passed on to the north,
the horses nose to nose, and my stirrup leather brushing the giant's
knee at every jump of El Mahdi. The huge Cardinal galloped in the
moonlight like some splendid machine of bronze, never a misstep, never a
false estimate, never the difference of a finger's length in the long,
even jumps. It might have been the one-eyed Agib riding his mighty horse
of brass, except that no son of a decadent Sultan ever carried the bulk
of Orange Jud. And the eccentric El Mahdi! There was no cause for
fault-finding on this night. He galloped low and easily, gathering his
grey legs as gracefully as his splendid, nervous mother. I watched his
mane fluttering in the stiff breeze, his slim ears thrust forward, the
moon shining on his steel-blue hide. For once he seemed in sympathy with
what I was about. Seemed, I write it, for it must have been a mistaken
fancy. This splendid, indifferent rascal shared the sensations of no
living man. Long and long ago he had sounded life and found it hollow.
Still, as if he were a woman, I loved him for this accursed
indifference. Was it because his emotions were so hopelessly
inaccessible, or because he saw through the illusion we were chasing; or
because--because--who knows what it was? We have no litmus-paper test
for the charm of genius.

Under us the dry leaves crackled like twigs snapping in a fire, and the
flying sand cut the bushes along the roadway like a storm of whizzing
hailstones. In the wide water of the Valley River the moon flitted, and
we led her a lively race. When I was little I had a theory about this
moon. The old folks were all wrong about its uses. Lighting the night
was a piece of incidental business. It was there primarily as a door
into and out of the world. Through it we came, carried down from the
hill-tops on the backs of the crooked men and handed over to the old
black mammy who unwrapped us trembling by the firelight. Then we
squalled lustily, and they said "A child is born."

When a man died, as we have a way of saying, he did but go back with
these same crooked men through the golden door of the world. Had I not
seen the moon standing with its rim on the eastern ridge of the