Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/255

 the figure?' Here I touched the too yielding ankle-joint with my boot.

That may have decided him—much hung in the balance. Many a year of splendid service—a child's life saved—a grand night-exploit in a flooded river, with distressed damsels nearly overborne by a raging torrent,—all these lay in the future.

'You gimme thirty pound, boss,' he gulped out. 'You'll never be sorry for it.'

'Lend me a saddle,' quoth I. 'I'll write the cheque now. Take him out; I can ride him away.'

I did so. Never did I—never did another man—make a better bargain.

I had partly purchased and wholly christened him to match another bay celebrity named Railway, of whom I had become possessed after this fashion. Wanting a harness horse at short notice a few months before, I betook myself to the coach depot of Cobb and Co. situated in Lonsdale Street. Mr. Beck was then the manager, and to him I addressed myself. He ordered out several likely animals—from his point of view—for my inspection. But I was not satisfied with any of them. At length, 'Bring out the Railway horse,' said the man in authority. And out came, as I thought, rather a 'peacocky' bay, with head and tail up. A great shoulder certainly, but rather light-waisted—hem—possessed of four capital legs. Very fine in the skin yes; still I mistrusted him as a 'Sunday horse.' Never was there a greater mistake.

'Like to see him go?' I nodded assent. In a minute and a half we were spinning up Lonsdale Street in an Abbot buggy, across William and down Collins Street, then pretty crowded, at the rate of fourteen miles an hour; Mr. Beck holding a broad red rein in either hand, and threading the ranks of vehicles with graceful ease.

'He can go,' I observed.

'He's a tarnation fine traveller, I tell you,' was the answer—a statement which I found, by after-experience, to be strictly in accordance with fact.

The price required was forty pounds. The which promptly paying (this was in 1860), I drove my new purchase out to Heidelberg that night. One of those horses that required of one nothing but to sit still and hold him; fast, game, wiry and enduring.