Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/71

Rh The wind picked up a cloud of dust, molded it into the strangely lifelike figure of a horseman, and rushed that form across the valley at his left; it melted into thin air, as many a man had melted to nothingness in the mountain desert.

A great melancholy dropped upon Andy. He felt a childish weakness; dropping his elbows upon the pommel of the saddle, he buried his face in his hands. In that moment he needed desperately something to which he could appeal for comfort. In that moment a child of ten coming upon him could have "stuck up" Andy with a wooden imitation of a gun and driven him without resistance back to Martindale.

The weakness passed slowly.

He dismounted and looked to the pinto, for the pinto had worked hard, and now he stood with his forelegs somewhat apart and braced, and his head hung low. Every muscle of his body was relaxed, and, like a good cattle pony, not knowing what strange and violent exertion might be demanded of him the next moment he made the most of this instant of rest. And now the cinches were loosened; the sweat was rubbed carefully from him. Since he stood sagging to the right side and pointing the toe of his off hind foot Andy anxiously lifted that hoof to make sure that his horse had not picked up a stone. The pinto rewarded him by coming to life and raising his head just long enough to gauge and deliver a kick at Andy's head. It missed its mark by the proverbial breadth of a hair, and the pinto dropped his head again with a grunt of disappointment.

It made his rider grin with relief, that vicious little demonstration. When the cinches were drawn up again, a moment later, the pinto distended his lungs to make a slack after the girths were fastened, but Andy put his