“What then? What’s ‘once’ to a stupid like me? Ain’t this the right grip o’ the thing—so?”
“No, indeed! You should see Miguel. His touch is like a feather on the rein yet—so firm! Amador would neither disobey him nor obey anybody else. See. This way. Don’t squeeze your hand so tight. You look, Dennis, you do look as if you were in—agony!”
The poor fellow was. He would a thousand times rather have been striding along upon his own stout feet than riding that uncomfortable thing. The saddle had become a throne of torment. His great boots seemed like lead. His hat flopped in his eyes, his buckskin jacket gave him a vapor bath, and his spurs got into the wrong places, goading rather than guiding the broncho.
Carlota suggested:
“S’pose we wait and rest a bit, and I’ll give you another lesson. Good. First, now name him. Then we’ll talk to him by his name till he learns it, and finds that new, better behavior is expected of him.”
“All right, me little lady. That there Meegell rests now an’ again, I s’pose?”
“Surely. Did you think that he rode all the time?”
Dennis had so thought. The vivid picture in his imagination was of a dark and handsome horseman sitting upright in his saddle and careering at breakneck speed over hill and plain.
“The name, Dennis. Let’s stick to that, first.”
“Acushla! What says you to—Cork?”