Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/80

 was duly appreciative. He had not mounted a horse in years before that morning, not since his early college days, in fact, when he had been considered a daring horseman among his polo-playing kind.

This was going to be different from playing polo on a level field, an hour or so at a stretch. The truth of this was shot through him from every aching joint, every saddle gall, as that forty-mile ride stretched out to seemingly endless distance. But he would take it as it came; his training through the past four years had built him up to that, let them pile it on as heavy as they might.

More than once that day he noted Nearing sizing him up to see how he was taking it, turning eyes which had more of contempt, he was certain, than faith in them, eyes that sneered for the figure the sailor cut, with his lifting in the saddle with the horse's stride.

Nearing advised him, kindly enough, that it would be well to sit down in the saddle, even going to some length to explain and illustrate how it was to be accomplished. Barrett did the best he could to catch the theory, if nothing more, and theory was about all he managed to get out of it. It was something like learning to write with simplified spelling when a man has been schooled in the accepted way. Many costly lessons under a fashionable riding-master had fastened the lifting habit upon this candidate for range proficiency. It was going to be equal to pulling teeth to get over it and learn a strange, new style.

The rifle slung in saddle holster, the barrel of it eoming under the hollow of the rider's knee, did not