"Yes'um, and he flung me!"
Eloise laughed. "Served you right. You know that horse doesn't like you."
"An' when I went into the stall to saddle him, he remembered it."
"Of course he did. I told him never to let you or anyone else ride him—no one but me."
"That horse," said Aunt Lucretia, as we followed Eloise to the barn, "is dangerous. I have been expecting to hear of him killing her. It's all in his pedigree, Jack; he can't help being mean. His sire was a rattle-headed but game and iron horse—fast, but utterly unreliable. You may remember how fast he was, but would go crazy, and ran away in a race, running into another horse and getting a sulky shaft driven through his heart. All of his colts I ever saw are crazy, fast and game—but cruelly mean when roused. Still I'm to blame for this one. I thought Little Sister's brain and sweet temper might overcome it in the sire."
"Little Sister is his dam, then?" I said, patting the neck of the mare I was riding.
"Yes, he was foaled the year after you left for school, and is now three," she answered.
I heard Satan before I saw him. He was walking the length of his halter, now and then neighing, then whinnying to Eloise softly. It was the sound of her voice that had softened him. Above the anger which shook his frame, maddened at the sight of the groom who had offended him, he had heard the soothing voice of Eloise, and responded with a gentle whinny.
She smiled. "Just listen to him! Dangerous—he's an angel! Bring him out, Jim." She winked at Aunt Lucretia and me.
Jim grinned sillily. "'Scuse me, Miss 'Leeze; you's jes' sayin' that to guy me. He loves my leetle boy, an' he feeds him an' keers for 'im," he added, "but it looks like he thinks I put an insultment on him. 'Scuse me, Miss Leeze, but I wouldn't go in there for no money."