Jim was like a boy. The intoxication of her presence sent all the foreboding from his brain. He did riding tricks, at her request, and set her marveling at his uncanny control of his mount. He seemed to be on intimate terms with the latter, stranger though it was. Weird “cluckings” from his mouth were understood and obeyed without use of spurs.
“It’s marvelous!” she said. “He seems to understand all those noises.”
“It’s horse language,” he replied simply.
“Oh, come!”
He made no reply, but dismounted. The horse stood perfectly still.
“You watch out,” he said. “I’m going to tell him to walk forrard.”
He made a queer noise, like water running out of a bottle, and the animal walked forward. A slight variation of the sound, and it stopped. He laughed at her mystified expression, and bidding her ride on, ran at his horse and with a magnificent leap sprang clear on to its back. In a 77 second he was rushing like the wind across the moor. He jerked up the animal until it stood almost perpendicular on its hind-legs, and came back to her.
“It’s jest thinking in horse-sense,” he said. “I ran a ranch for seven years, and you can’t do that without thinking like a horse.”
They sat on the top of Hay Tor, and looked across the tumbling country to where the sea lay like a strip of cloth twenty miles away. Right across the moors came the steady westerly wind, sighing and soughing, touching their cheeks with its fresh fingers.
“Is Colorado better than this?” she queried.