“You ain’t goin’ to take the dust from a common mule, are you, Betty?”
As if she understood, the laboring mare, already wet with foam, and with nostrils throbbing, sprang forward.
“Out of the way!” shouted her rider. His light hair lay flat on his bare head and his arms were close by his side. “Mules off the road for the old hunter!”
Like a flash the boy on the mare passed the plunging, clattering old Jim and his humped-up rider. But only for a moment. Proud Betty, once the pride of the late Colonel Aspley Marshall, the hunter that took the dust from nothing in western Virginia, had seen her day. Old Jim came on like an avalanche.
“Cain’t stop dis beas’, Marse Morey. Git outen de way, Marse Morey, we’s needin’ de road.”
Hanging about the neck of the mule, Amos, the colored boy, opened his mouth, flashing a row of white teeth on Morey’s sight. The young rider knew that Amos was laughing at him. He set his square jaw and leaned forward over the old hunter’s neck.
“Betty,” he whispered, patting the soft, silken coat of his laboring animal, “for the honor of the stable we used to own—go it!”
And Betty tried—her nostrils now set, her head and neck forward, and the light young rider firm but easy in his seat.
“Can’t hold him, eh?” shouted Betty’s rider as the mule drew alongside.
Amos was digging his bare heels into old Jim’s ribbed sides and lashing like mad with the end of his bridle rope.