“I b’lieve you care more for them than for anything! You funny girl!” answered Beatrice, reprovingly. “You’re just the same as he is; an’ Mama says horses are to my father what play-hour is to school-boys. I don’t know ’xactly what she means—but—he loves them, anyway.”
“Course he does. He couldn’t help it, could he?”
“Mama can help it. She says she ’xpects some of us’ll get killed; ’specially with Diablo, that ’xpensive colt. He isn’t anything—yet; never had anything on him, even a halter; but Papa says, ‘he must be broken, if he scours the country to find somebody brave enough to do it!’”
“Diablo? Oh, he’s the one ’at ’most killed the groom, isn’t he?”
“Yes. An’ he’s kicked a whole lot of folks. He’s out in his paddock all alone; and the men just give him food and water, an’ let him stay there. Mama says that he ought to be shot, and then he couldn’t hurt anybody else.”
“Why! How dreadful!”
“What? To hurt folks?”
“To shoot a beautiful fellow like Diablo. I’ve looked at him over the fence, when I’ve been riding with Sutro; and he is the finest horse in Old Knollsboro.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, he’s the finest one I’ve seen here, yet. He has better points, even, than Gray Monarch, Kentucky Bob’s thoroughbred.”