Page:War Drums (1928).pdf/188

 leaping deer. Yes, she was beautiful, and doubtless it was true that in England many gentlemen were her servitors because of that beauty. But—he smiled a wry smile and, leaning forward, whispered to his mare:

"Tuti, my little Snowbird," he spoke softly into the silken ear, "she is a very lovely lady, this Mistress Jolie, this Lady Sanguilla. But saw you ever such pride, Tuti, such vanity of woman?"

The mare flicked her ear and tossed her small shapely head. Lachlan laughed quietly.

"Be at ease, Tuti, little Snowbird," he murmured. "For a while longer thy master's heart belongs to thee alone."

Nevertheless, he kept his eyes upon the girl. She rode a little in front of him, Meg Pearson by her side. Ugly Meg's horse, like that of Jock Pearson, who rode with Almayne a few paces behind Lachlan, was a blue roan of the big-boned English type; but Jolie's claybank gelding, Selu by name, was of the Indian breed, small, slim, long-maned, long-tailed, smallheaded like a barb. Men said that the wild horse herds, which roamed the forest savannahs on both sides of the Blue Mountains and from which the Indian warriors obtained their mounts, were sprung from the horses that the Prince Soto had abandoned in the wilderness long years before on his ill-fated march to the Great River. There was truth in the tale, for in those days, before in-breeding had produced the mustang type of later years, one could see in many of the Indian horses—Chicasaw horses, as the