Suddenly he tossed his head with the bright, chestnut mane, those long, silky eyelashes winking mischievously, wheeled and darted off, with a teasing snort which plainly said:
“Not this morning—thank you! I’d rather race automobiles along by the fence.”
“He senses that I have a halter with me,” murmured the radiant girl, keeping the right hand still out of sight and renewing honeyed negotiations with her left, displaying the oats, golden in the flash of mountain sunlight, spilling a little of it into her shoes, while the horse circled round her in wide rings, took a notion to walk slowly towards her—then, at ten feet, again, darted away.
“You’re a rogue, Revelation. But you’re not an outlaw—like Cartoon. But I suppose he isn’t really a bad horse—or he wouldn’t be mingling with human beings, up here in the Long Pasture—only Roman-nosed and stubborn.”
Pem’s glance roved now to a distant tall horse, a dark bay, with a long neck sawing restlessly in the sunlight, a sharp sickle face, almost a hatchet face, slanted sidelong, who hovered nervously upon the outskirts of the parleying group of girls and horses. With gay satisfaction, her eye came back to Revelation.
A Morgan bay, fifteen hands high, with a foxy coat of satin, in every lithe movement the thoroughbred, shy, sensitive, fast,—but kindly, good-natured, too.
She wheedled with the amber oats again, spattering it from the tilted tin upon the laughing air, while her horse, in ever narrowing circles, sampled the scent, nose away out, velvet nostrils quivering into mischievous smiles—at the slightest movement to catch him, he was off again, heels flinging.
“You’re as naughty as can be, this morning, Boy. You’ve raced autos too much—while we were handling the ‘crutch.’” The girl’s eyes danced, blue as the sky-ways above her. “Can’t you take a lesson from your mother, Revel? But I suppose you’re just a Revelation of what’s hidden in her—only motherhood, mincing motherhood, keeps it down,” she laughed to herself, turning to glance over the mountain pasture—a third of a mile in width.
Everywhere the same catch-as-can game was going on, with oats and halter, everywhere challenge and parley, at the sunny end of the range that is, at which the horses had congregated!
Harmony, Fox, Galatea, old King, full of pasture play and human curiosity, running along by the fence, in turn, to ogle a tempting girl, with, somewhere, a halter concealed about her, then archly taking the “fling-strings”, putting fifty or a hundred yards between them and a morning ride, kicking blissfully, as they ran!