"Pete!"
He breathed the beloved name without knowing that he spoke.
The grin on the dusky face widened, the big hands rubbed each other in confusion. For several seconds they faced each other thus. Suddenly the half breed whistled twice, and out from the trees trotted an ugly little pinto. Its right ear turned forward for Mahon's familiar welcome, the left, struggling to follow, fell away grotesquely in its upper half. But the weirdly coloured blotches that made it a pinto were unlike any colour of living hide; and the pinto seemed to feel it.
"Whiskers ain't quite got back 'spectable yet, Boy," grinned Blue Pete.
"I sure dosed her fer fair up thar among them bohunks, an' she's
hangin' her head a bit. But she's the same ole gal, ain't yuh,
Whiskers?"
He whistled again. The pinto sank to the ground and lay as motionless as the rocks about.
"Ain't lost a trick, not a dang one. An' she knows yuh, Boy. Yuh ain't changed—not 's much as me. . . . But I'm sure the same old Blue Pete."
Mahon dug cruel spurs into his horse's sides. Throwing himself from the saddle, he seized the half-breed's hand and held it in both his own without a word. A great tear gathered on either eyelid. Blue Pete laughed in shamefaced happiness and dropped his squinting eyes.
And the pinto tore to shreds the rule of a lifetime: she clambered to her feet without orders and reached up to nibble at the edge of Mahon's Stetson. The Sergeant threw an arm about her neck and pressed his face to the yellow blotch below the left eye. . . .
As the evening shadows from the Hills lay long across the prairie, and the birds chirped sleepily, Mahon stood up with a sigh.
"You'll have to come in to the barracks, Pete. I—I can't help it."