“This little girl is to give it to me.”
“I? Why, what can a little girl like me do for a big man like you?” asked Steenie, in eager wonder.
“Show me how Kentucky Bob tackles an unbroken colt.”
An instant’s critical scrutiny of the genial face before her convinced Steenie that the words were “earnest,” not “fun;” still—she could hardly believe her own vision. “Do you really, truly mean it?”
“I really, truly do. If you are not afraid.”
“Afraid? My! I couldn’t be afraid of a horse, could I? I love them so; and my father says that they know it, ’stinctively.”
“Instinctively. Well—the old caballero’s stories seem almost incredible; but now is your chance to prove them true,” responded Diablo’s owner, studying, in his turn, very critically the animated face of the little girl beside him. He did not at all believe any of the “yarns” which Sutro had “spun” to him during their ramble over the horse-farm; but he had immensely enjoyed the boastful eloquence of one whom he considered a “crack-brained old man;” and he did not seriously intend allowing Steenie to approach nearer than a safe distance of the beautiful colt with the unsubdued will. But he thought it would give her a pleasure to watch Diablo over the paling; and he anticipated great amusement, also, in watching Vives “back down” when once brought face to face with fact,—fact in the shape of a “vicious” four-year-old whom the best horse-trainers had, as yet, been unable to reduce to submission.
But he hadn’t counted at all upon the perfect honesty and credulity of “the Little Lady of the Horse,” nor her own proud acceptance of the title which her adoring Santa Felisans had given their “Little Un;” else what followed then would never have happened.
As they came to the paddock, and looked over the paling, Diablo’s owner pointed him out as: “The handsome brute! There he is. As powerful and wicked as his name denotes. Locked up in those shapely limbs is a mint of money,—that nobody dares conquer for me. A fine animal, eh?”
“He’s perfect! Oh, you beauty, you darling!”