“Yes, this is Mongrel—and not a half-bad horse, either.”
“I’ve noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate. Say—isn’t it a gaudy morning?”
“Right you are!”
“Thorndike, it’s Andalusian! and when that’s said, all’s said.”
“Andalusian and Oregonian, Antonio! Put it that way, and you have my vote. Being a native up there, I know. You being Andalusian-born—”
“Can speak with authority for that patch of paradise? Well, I can. Like the Don! like Sancho! This is the correct Andalusian dawn now—crisp, fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent—”
“‘What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o’er Ceylon’s isle—’
—git up, you old cow! stumbling like that when we’ve just been praising you! out on a scout and can’t live up to the honor any better than that? Antonio, how long have you been out here in the Plains and the Rockies?”
“More than thirteen years.”
“It’s a long time. Don’t you ever get homesick?”