g his
stirrups with impatience, but his tongue, strangely enough, quiet. He
turned his mare across the road before us when we were in our saddles.

"Jud," he said, "don't go off half-cocked. An' if there's hell raised,
look out for Quiller. I'll stay here an' bring up the cattle as soon as
it's light." Then he pulled his mare out of the way. El Mahdi was on his
hind legs while Ump was speaking. When the Bay Eagle turned out, he came
down with a great jump and began to run.

I bent over and clamped my knees to the horse and let him go. He was
like some engine whose throttle is thrown open. In the first few plunges
he seemed to rock with energy, as though he might be thrown off his legs
by the pent-up driving-power. He and one other horse, the Black Abbot,
started like this when they were mad. And, clinging in the saddle, one
felt for a moment that the horse under him would rise out of the road or
go crashing into the fence.

You will not understand this, my masters, if you have ridden only
trained running horses or light hunters. They go about the business of a
race with eagerness enough, but still as a servant goes about his task.
Imagine, if you please, how a horse would run with you in the night if
he was seventeen hands high and a barbarian!

We passed the tavern in a dozen plunges. I saw the candle which Ump had
flung down, flickering by the horse-block, a little patch of light. Then
the Cardinal's shoe crushed it out.

My coat sleeves cracked like sails. The wind seemed to whistle along my
ribs. The horse's shoulders felt like pistons working under a cloth. I
was a part of that horse. I fitted my body to him. I adjusted myself to
the drive of his legs, to the rise and fall of his shoulders, to the
play of every muscle. I rode when his back rocked, like a sort of loose
hump fastened on it. His mane blew over my face and went streaming back.
My nostrils were filled with the steam from his sweating skin.

Jud rode after the same manner, reducing the area of wind resistance to
the smallest space. One watching the horses pass would have seen no
rider at all. He might have marked a heavy outline as though something
were bound across the saddle or clung flat to it.

You, my masters, who are accustomed to the horse as a slave, cannot know
him as a freeman. That docked thing standing by the curb is a long
bred-out degenerate. In the Hills a horse was born and bred up to be a
freeman. When the time came, he yielded to