That night I mailed postal number two. “Take up a collection,” I says again; and added, “Pull that greaser’s laig.”
I knowed it couldn’t allus go on like that. And, by jingo! seems as if things come my way again. Fer one mornin’, when I was settin’ in a caffy eatin’ slap-jacks, I heerd some fellers talkin’ about a herd of Texas hosses that had stampeded in the streets the night back. Wal, I ast ’em a question ’r two, and then I lit out fer Sixty-four Street, my eyes plumb sore fer a look at a Western hoss with a’ ingrowin’ lope.
When I got to the corral, what do you think? Right in front of my eyes, a-lookin’ at the herd, and a-pointin’ out her pick, was–Macie Sewell!
I didn’t let her see me. I just started fer a harness shop, and I bought a pair of spurs. “Prepare, m’ son,” I says to myself; “it’ll all be over soon. They’s goin’ to be trouble, Cupid, trouble, when Mace tries to ride a Texas bronc with a city edication that ain’t complete.”
She didn’t show up in the park that day. I jigged ’round, just the same, workin’ them spurs. But early next mornin’, as I done time on my postage stamp, here Mace huv in sight.
Shore enough, she was on a new hoss. It was one of them blue roans, with a long tail, and a roached mane. Gen’ally that breed can go like greased lightnin’, and outlast any other critter on four laigs. But this one didn’t put up much speed that trip. She’d been car-bound seventeen days.
Clost behind her, I come, practicin’ a knee grip.
Nothin’ happened that mornin’. Ev’ry time she got where the trail runs ’longside the wagon-road, none of them locoed bull’s-eye Simpson vehicles was a-passin’. When she went to go into her stable, Mace slowed her down till the street cars was gone by. The blue roan was meeker ’n a blind purp.
But I knowed it couldn’t last.
The next afternoon the roan come good and ready. She done a fancy gait into the park. Say! a J. I. C. bit couldn’t a’ helt her! ’Twixt Fifty-nine and the resservoyer, she lit just four times; and ev’ry time she touched, she kicked dirt into the eyes of the stylish police gent that was keepin’ in handy reach. A little further north, where they’s a hotel, she stood on her hind laigs t’ look at the scenery.