The eye which had been so red-stained and fierce during the long ride
after Canby was now bright and gentle. At every turn she pricked her
small sharp ears as if she expected home and friends on the other side
of the curve. And now and again she tossed her head and glanced back
at the master for a moment and then whinnied across some
echoing ravine.
It was Mary's way of showing happiness, and her master's
acknowledgment was to run his gloved left hand up through her mane and
with his ungloved right, that tanned and agile hand, pat her
shoulder lightly.
Passing to the end of the down-grade, they reached a slight upward
incline, and the mare, as if she had come to familiar ground, broke
into a gallop, a matchless, swinging stride. Swerving to right and to
left among the great boulders, like a football player running a broken
field, she increased the gallop to a racing pace.
That twisting course would have shaken an ordinary horseman to the
toes, but Pierre, swaying easily in the saddle, dropped the reins into
the crook of his left arm and rolled a cigarette in spite of the
motion and the wind.
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