TRAVERS’ FIRST HUNT
By Richard Harding Davis
Young Travers, who had been engaged to a girl down on Long Island for the last three months, only met her father and brother a few weeks before the day set for the wedding.
The brother was a master of hounds near South Hampton; the father and son talked horse all day and until one o’clock in the morning, for they owned fast thoroughbreds, and entered them at Sheepshead Bay, and other race tracks.
Old Mr. Paddock, the father of the girl, had often said that when a young man asked for his daughter’s hand, he would ask him in return, not if he lived straight, but if he could ride straight; and that on his answering in the affirmative, depended her parent’s consent.
Travers had met Miss Paddock and her mother in Europe. He was invited to their place in the fall when the hunting season opened, and had spent the evening most pleasantly and satisfactorily with his fiancée in the corner of the drawing-room. But as soon as the women had gone, young Paddock joined him and said: “You ride, of course?”
Travers had never ridden, but had been prompted what to answer by Miss Paddock, and so said there was nothing he liked better. As he expressed it, he would rather ride than sleep.
“That’s good!” said Paddock. “I’ll give you a mount on Satan to-morrow morning at the meet. He is a bit nasty at the start of the season, and ever since he killed Wallis, the second groom, last year, none of us care much to ride him; but you can manage him, no doubt. He’ll just carry your weight.”
Mr. Travers dreamed that night of taking large, desperate leaps into space on a wild horse that snorted forth flames, and that rose at solid stone walls as though they were hay-racks. He was tempted to say he was ill in the morning, which was, considering the state of his mind, more or less true, but concluded as he would have to ride sooner or later during his visit, and if he died breaking his neck, it would be in a good cause, he determined to do his best.
He didn’t want to ride at all for two excellent reasons: First, because he wanted to live for Miss Paddock’s sake, and second, because he wanted to live for his own sake.