Page:The Days Work (1899).djvu/66

 was really the result of bad driving. She had one working gait, which she could hold till further notice; a Roman nose; a large, prominent eye; a shaving-brush of a tail; and an irritable temper. She took her salt through her bridle; but the others trotted up nuzzling and wickering for theirs, till we emptied it on the clean rocks. They were all standing at ease, on three legs for the most part, talking the ordinary gossip of the Back Pasture—about the scarcity of water, and gaps in the fence, and how the early windfalls tasted that season—when little Rick blew the last few grains of his allowance into a crevice, and said:

"Hurry, boys! 'Might ha' knowed that livery-plug would be around."

We heard a clatter of hoofs, and there climbed up from the ravine below a fifty-center transient—a wall-eyed, yellow frame-house of a horse, sent up to board from a livery-stable in town, where they called him "The Lamb," and never let him out except at night and to strangers. My companion, who knew and had broken most of the horses, looked at the ragged hammer-head as it rose, and said quietly:

"Ni-ice beast. Man-eater, if he gets the chance—see his eye. Kicker, too—see his hocks. Western horse."

The animal lumbered up, snuffling and grunting. His feet showed that he had not worked for weeks and weeks, and our creatures drew together significantly.

"As usual," he said, with an underhung sneer—"bowin' your heads before the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin' over you."

"Mine's done," said the Deacon; he licked up the