"What else did he say?"
"He didn't know a great deal about them, after all, but he said that now and then a deaf and dumb Negro comes. He's a regular giant. Whenever he meets a man he gets off the horse and puts a paper into the hand of the other. On the paper it says: Fifty dollars in gold coin! Always that."
It was like a fairy tale to Connor.
"Jude Harper of Collinsville met him once. He had only ten dollars in gold, but he had three hundred in paper. He offered the whole three hundred and ten to the deaf-mute but he only shook his head."
"How often does he come out of the valley?"
"Once a year—once in two years—nobody knows how often. Of course it doesn't take him long to find a man who'll buy a horse like one of the grays for fifty dollars. The minute the horse is sold he turns around and starts walking back. Pete Ricks tried to follow him. He turned back on Pete, jumped on him from behind a rock, and jerked him off his horse. Then he got him by the hair and bent his head back. Pete says he expected to have his neck broken—he was like a child in the arms of that giant. But it seemed that the mute was only telling him in deaf-and-dumb talk that he mustn't follow. After he'd frightened the life out of Pete the big mute went away again, and Pete came home as fast as his horse could carry him."
Connor swallowed. "Where do they get the name Eden Gray?"
"I don't know. Dad said that three things were true about every gray. It's always a gelding; it's always one price, and it always has a flaw. I looked the one over that ran to-day and couldn't see anything wrong, though."
"Cow-hocked," said Connor, breathing hard. "Go on!"
"Dad made up his mind that the reason they didn't sell more horses was because the owner only sold to weed out his stock."