Whatever it was, it made his jaw set
hard and brought grave lines into his face.
She stepped back, asking: "Well?"
"We'll do it. What a little demon you are, Jack!"
"Then we'll have to start now. There's barely time."
They ran from the room together, and as they passed through the room
below Wilbur called after them: "The dance?"
"Yes."
"Wait and go with me."
"We ride in a roundabout way."
They were through the door as Pierre called back, and a moment later
the hoofs of their horses scattered the gravel down the hillside.
Jacqueline rode a black stallion sired by her father's mighty Thunder,
who had grown old but still could do the work of three ordinary horses
in carrying the great bulk of his master. The son of Thunder was
little like his sire, but a slender-limbed racer, graceful, nervous,
eager. A clumsy rider would have ruined the horse in a single day's
hard work among the trails of the mountain-desert, but Jacqueline,
fairly reading the mind of the black, nursed his strength when it was
needed and let him run free and swift when the ground before him
was level.
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