Page:The Way of the Wild (1930).pdf/84

 horses occasionally crossed the mountains from the west, and always these migrating bands traveled fast, pausing only to feed. Yet, though the hunt might carry him far, Corane the Raven, as he ran swiftly across Long Meadow towards the woods-edge where he had left Manito-Kinibic, had little doubt as to its issue. This wild stallion was a great horse, beautiful, swift and strong—by far the finest wild horse that the Raven had ever seen. But there was one other that was his equal in all things except beauty; and that other was Manito-Kinibic, the Raven's roan.

There was no chief of the Cherokees, the Creeks or the Choctaws who had a horse that could match Manito-Kinibic. His like had never been known in the Overhills. Dunmore the trader had seen him and had wondered whence he came; for though the Raven had taken him from the Chickasaws, whose country lay west of the mountains, it was plain that this big-boned burly roan was not of the western or southern wild breed, while his name, which in the white man's tongue meant Rattlesnake, had to Dunmore's ear a northern sound.

Thick-bodied, wide-headed, short-maned, heavy-eared, Manito-Kinibic was almost grotesquely ugly; yet in his very ugliness there was a sinister, almost reptilian fascination, heightened by the metallic sheen of his red-speckled coat, the odd flatness of