“Where then?”
“Wherever she was. Living for her. Dying for her. Chasing her if she were dragged from me. Snatching her from the jaws of death.”
“Hold hard! You talk as furiously as if you saw such a scene before your eyes.”
“Your horse brings up all the chivalric tales I have ever read. If these were knightly days, and two brothers in arms, like you and myself, ever rescued distressed damsels from the grip of caitiffs vile, we ought to be mounted upon a pair of Don Fulanos when we rode the miscreants down.”
The fine sensitiveness of a poetic man like Brent makes a prophet of him,—that is to say, a man who has the poet’s delicate insight into character anticipates everything that character will do. So Brent was never surprised; though I confess I was, when I found men, horses, and places doing what he had hinted long before.
“Well,” continued I, “I paid two years’ work for my horse. Was it too much? Is he worth it?”
“Everything is worth whatever one gives for it. The less you get, the more you get. Proved by the fact that the price of all life is death. Jacob served seven years for an ugly wife; why shouldn’t an honester man serve two for a beautiful horse?”
“Jacob, however, had a pretty wife thrown in when he showed discontent.”
“Perhaps you will. If the Light of the Harem of Sultan Brigham should see you prancing on that steed, she would make one bound to your crupper and leave a dark where the Light was.”
“I do not expect to develop a taste for Mormon ladies.”