Instantly a chorus of neighs and bellows arose on all sides of Renaud. His free drove had passed the night in the neighborhood. He was surrounded by the familiar forms of his own beasts.
They came at the call of Blanchet and Le Doux and the drover’s voice. The mares were white as salt. Some of them came trotting up, some galloping, some followed by their foals; and passed their heads between the reeds, peered curiously in, and stood there,—or else, with a cunning air, set off again, as who should say: “There’s the tamer, let us be off!” And there was a great kicking and flinging of heels away from the man’s side.
Some bulls, thin, nervous black fellows, whipping their sides with their long tails, also came up, took alarm, remembering that they had been punished for some shortcoming, and, turning tail, decamped in the same way, and when they were out of sight, suddenly stopped.
But as the dondaïre remained there, few of the horses and cattle left the spot.
Some, the oldest or the wisest, slowly assumed a kneeling posture, as if to resume their interrupted repose, then, scenting the approaching sun, wound their tongues about the tufts of salt grass, drew them into their mouths and chewed placidly, while the silvery foam fell from their muzzles.
Others, in the same posture, lazily licked their sides. A mother, nursing her calf, watched him with a calm, gentle eye.
Here a stallion drew near a mare, reached her side in two bounds, with tail in air and bristling mane, and bold, sonorous, trumpet-like call—then reared, and when the mare leaped aside, bit at her and with a sudden sidewise movement dodged the kick she aimed at him.
More than one bull, too, paid court to the other sex, rose clumsily on his hind legs, only to fall again on his four feet, with nothing beneath him.
The awakening of the drove was not complete. The animals were still dull and heavy. They were awaiting the coming of the sun.
Renaud approached a half-broken stallion he had sometimes ridden, and threw over his neck the séden he had just coiled for that purpose—Livette’s séden and Blanchet’s, all stained with mud from having brought so many beasts to earth.