“And—thank you for a lesson in wrestling—and—and in other things.”
CHAPTER XXX
BATTLE JIMMIE, COURIER
BATTLE JIMMIE was riding.
If his general posture on the black thoroughbred’s back tended to suggest a monkey strapped to the back of a circus pony, he was none the less riding. And at a breakneck speed.
Wholly ignorant of horsemanship’s finer shades, he yet had two great qualifications for a jockey: the lightest of weight and a stark dearth of fear.
He kicked his heels into the black sides of his mount just as often as he could remain in any one spot long enough to direct the kick, and ever and again he would release his grip on the mane long enough to wallop the straining black flanks with the bearing-rein he still held.
The splendid thoroughbred needed none of these incentives to flight. Indignant at his new rider’s gawky horsemanship and at his ignorance at the way a blooded horse should be handled, the black none the less realized that he was called upon to display his fleetest pace.
And he did it.
The futile little heel-thumps and the occasional larrup of the bearing-rein hurt the horse not at all. But they insulted his feelings, and he took out his indignation in the form of frantic speed.
Ears flattened back, head and neck in straight line with the withers; long, sinuous black body stretched out close to earth, the beautiful black cleared the uneven ground like a swallow.