The haze, as some bluff river headland the spray.
And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent back
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track;
And one eye’s black intelligence—ever that glance
O’er its white edge at me, his own master, askance!
And the thick, heavy spume-flakes, which aye and anon,
His fierce lips shook upward in galloping on”
I claim that the Hals are the best all-round horses in the world—they are tireless roadsters and jog, at a trot, a good road gait. By half past one I was in Williamsport—twelve miles—and the roan mare had not struck a pace—her fastest gait. After crossing the river and getting into the rough roads over the hills of Hickman County, she climbed them like a mountain goat, for if there is anything a pacer likes it is to chop up his gait for hill work. Not once did she make a misstep. The chief beauty of these hunts, to me, had always been in the fact that I had only to throw a saddle on this mare, after getting to camp, and I had an easy seat all day in our rides over the hills and fields in pursuit of that most delightful of all Southern game—quail. It knocks the sport out of things when you have to take one horse to drive and another to ride, and another to do this, and another that. Reared for generations as one of the family, the Hal horse can come very nearly doing everything that his master can, and if this mare had asked me for a toddy before breakfast the next morning I should not have been at all surprised.
Duck River, Where the Wild Geese Roost.