“I don’t dare say because I am not respectable just now,” replied the voice. “I fell in the ditch and have nothing on but the Sunday shirt of Pedro. I am the funniest looking thing! wish I dared ride home in it to shock them all silly.”
“Why not?” he asked, and again the girlish laugh gave him an odd thrill of comradeship.
“A good enough reason; they’d take Pat from me, and say he wasn’t safe to ride––but he is! My tumble was my own fault for letting them put on that fool English saddle. Never again for me!”
“They are all right for old folks and a pacing pony,” he observed, and again he heard the bubbling laugh.
“Well, Pat is not a pacing pony, not by a long shot; and I’m not old folks––yet!” Then after a little silence, “Haven’t you any curiosity?”
“I reckon there’s none allowed me on this count,” he replied without lifting his head, “between the wooden bars and Pedro’s shirt you certainly put the fences up on me.”
“I’m a damsel in distress waiting for a rescuing knight with a white banner and a milk-white steed––” went on the laughing voice in stilted declamation.
“Sorry, friend, but my cayuse is a roan, and I never carried a white flag yet. You pick the wrong colors.”
Whereupon he began the chanting of a war song, with an eye stealthily on the barred window.
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Hurrah! Hurrah! For southern rights, hurrah! Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag That bears the single star! |