"Very well, I know you will keep your word."
But this, the csikós had omitted to add, "unless I am carried in on a sheet."
It was a hot sultry afternoon when he started, the sky was the colour of buttermilk, and the air charged with moisture. The play of the mirage seemed specially fantastic. Not a bird sang overhead, but all sank nestling in the grass. On the other hand the swarms of horse-flies, gad-flies, and midges appeared more wickedly inclined than ever, and the horse could only get along slowly, having to drive off the blood-thirsty torments, now with its hind-foot, now with its head. Still it never missed the path though the bridle lay slack between the csikós' fingers. Man too feels the approach of a storm.
Suddenly, as they reached that substantial triumph of Scythian architecture—the Hortobágy bridge—the csikós started.
"No, no!" he cried. "Here we can't go, old fellow. You know how I swore by the starry heavens never to cross that bridge again."
But never to ford the Hortobágy river was not included in his oath.
So he turned down below the mill, and where the water widens into the shallows, waded easily across. The horse had to swim a little, but the herdsman took no heed of that; his fringed linen trousers would soon dry in the hot sunshine.
Then he trotted on to the Hortobágy inn. Here the horse tried to go at a brisker pace, whinnying joyously the while. A glad neigh answered it, for there, tied up to an acacia, stood its comrade—the white-faced bay.
Properly speaking, the Hortobágy inn has no courtyard, for the wide grassy expanse fronting house, stable, and sheds is without fence of any sort. Still it serves as such. A table is put there, and two long benches where the customers sit tippling under the trees.
The csikós sprang from his horse, and tied it up to the other acacia, not that same tree to which the white-faced bay was tethered.