Page:Max Brand--The Seventh Man.djvu/264



He had already covered a good ten miles, and a large part of that through extremely rough going, but the black ran with his head as high as the moment he pulled out of Rickett that morning, and there was only enough sweat to make his slender neck and greyhound flanks flash in the sun. Back he winged toward Rickett, running as freely as the wild leader of a herd, sometimes turning his fine head to one side to look back at the master or gaze over the hills, sometimes slackening to a trot up a sharper ascent or lengthening into a fuller gallop on an easy down-slope. There seemed no purpose in the reins which were kept just taut enough to give the rider the feel of his mount, and the left hand which held them was never still for a moment, but played back and forth slightly with the motion of the head. Except in times of crisis those reins were not for the transmission of orders, it seemed, but they served as the wires through which the mind of the man and the mind of the horse kept in telegraphic touch.

In the meantime Black Bart loafed behind, lingering on the crest of each rise to look back, and then racing to catch up, but halfway back to Rickett he came up 250