August—Liaoyang, the enemy closing in.... There were times when John Morning doubted if he had ever been away from the sick man, Duke Fallows, and the crowds of Russian soldiery. Individually the days were long. Often in mid-afternoon, he stopped to think if some voice or picture of to-day’s dawning did not belong to yesterday or last week. Yet routine settled upon all that was past, and the days accumulated into a quantity of weeks that grew like the continual miracle of a hard man’s savings.
Always he missed something. He was hard in health, but felt white nowhere, in nor out, so much had he been played upon by sun and wind and dust. The Russian officers were continually asking him to try new horses—the roughest of the untamed purchases brought in by the Chinese. It had become quite the custom among the officers to advise with Morning on matters of horse-flesh. Fallows had started it by telling Lowenkampf that Morning formerly rode the jumpers in England, but the younger man had since earned his reputation in the Russian post.
A sorrel mare had appeared in the city. Rat-tailed and Roman-nosed she was, and covered with wounds. They had tried to ride her in from the Hun. Her skin was like satin and she had not been saddled decently. Just a wild, head-strong young mare in the beginning, but bad handling had made her a mankiller. Lieutenant Luban, soft with vodka and cigarettes, had dickered for the mare, and drunkenly insisted upon mounting at once. Morning caught the bridle after the first fight, and Luban slid off in his arms in a state of collapse. Clearly an adult devil lived in the sorrel. She was red-eyed in her rage, past pain, and walked like a man. She would have gone over backwards with Luban, and yet she was lovely to Morning’s eye, perfect as a yellow rose. He knew her sort—the kind that runs to courage and not to hair; the kind of individual that rarely breeds.
He led her apart, talked to her; knew that she only cared to kill him and be free. She was outrage; hate was the breath of her nostrils; but she made Morning forget his work.... Thirty officers were gathered in the compound. Morning had saddled her afresh; her back was easier—yet she was up, striking, pawing. He knew she meant to go back. Stirrup-free, he held her around the neck as she stood poised. His weight was against her toppling, but sheer deviltry hurled back her head, breaking the balance. They saw him push the hot yellow neck from him as she fell. He landed on his feet, facing her from the side, leaped clear—and then darted forward, catching the bridle-rein before she straightened her first front leg. Morning was in the saddle before she was up. Then the whole thing was done over again as perfectly as one with his hand in repeats a remarkable billiard-shot.
“It’s only a question of time—she’ll kill you,” said Fallows.
“How she hates the Chinese, but she’s the gamest thing in Asia,” Morning answered. “I’d like to be away alone with her.”
“You’d need a new continent for a romance like that,” Fallows said, and that night, in their room of Lowenkampf’s headquarters, he resumed the subject, his eyes lost in the dun ceiling.
“There’s only one name for that sorrel mare, if I’m consulted.”
“Name her,” Morning said.
“The one I’m thinking of—her name is Eve.”