“Why, then, has she been marked?” I inquired. “It is not usual for Americans to brand their horses, excepting those that belong to the government. Then they’re branded U.S.; this mark is a C.”
“Well, then, stranger, if you must know all about it, the mar’ wur tuk from our people on the grand, by that ar chapparil fox Canales. He burned in that ‘C.’ C stands for Canales, I reckin.”
“That’s true, and for many other names as well. But how did you get her back again?”
“Wagh! we kumd upon Canales an’ his yellerbellies, an’ tuk her from them ag’in, afore the singed bar had done smokin’. Now er yer satisfied?”
I was not. It is true, the story was probable enough. The mare was not Mexican, that was plain. The horse of that country is of a peculiar race, and is as easily distinguished from the English or American Arab, as a sheep is from a goat. Still she bore a Mexican mark, and had been in the possession of some of these people. She might have been, as the Ranger stated, one of our own horses captured and recaptured on the upper line; but I had not observed any such animal with the Texans on their arrival; and as I had heard that the ricos of Mexico had, from time to time, imported blood stock from England and the United States, I feared that she might prove to be one of these. The voice of the Texan interrupted my reflection.
“The critter’s Kaintuck,” continued he—“true Kaintuck. She wur brought down on the Grand, by a lootenant at the breakin’ out o’ this hyar muss. She were at Paler Alter, an’ at Monterey, an’ Bony Yeesty; and at that Hashendy, the time as Dan Drake rid the hundred-mile gallop on Cash Clay’s mar’. Old Kaintuck she er, an’ nothin’ else. They don’t raise such cattle in these hyar diggins, I reckin’. Yee-up, old gal; hold up yer corn-trap; thar’s money bid for ye!”
At the end of this curious monologue, the mare threw up her head and neighed long and loudly.
“Come, my man,” said I, “what’s the meaning of that?”
The neigh was peculiar, and struck me as that of a mare who had been recently separated from her colt.
“She’s a whigherin’ for a hoss, that’s hyar,” answered the Ranger coolly. “They haint been separate a half-an-hour for more ’n a yar, I reckin’. Hev they, Bill?”