‘A little grain from here is keeping them fit,’ he would report in effect. ‘And say, your Mallet-head sure has an appetite,’ he once observed. ‘Mountains agree with him. He flavors up his forage with all sorts of new leaves—even pine needles. Mamie’s more particular.’
Elbert caught a gleam from the cot. Bart’s black eyes were holding him. ‘You like ’em, don’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Horses.’
‘Sure,’ said Elbert.
‘I knew—the minute you climbed on that mare in front of the quarters in Arecibo. We were a bit in a hurry right then, but you didn’t jerk her round. I got to know pretty well before daylight that you were a real hand with a horse, Mister.’
So Bart was really fooled. He had said something of this kind before, that first daybreak here in El Relicario, but Elbert had feared then that his mind was wandering. He didn’t answer now.
‘I like these people,’ Bart was saying, about the Mexicans. ‘I get along with ’em pretty well, but they don’t savvy the horse. It doesn’t seem to run in the blood. Monte Vallejo who had all Sonora thinking he was a caballero—even to Monte, a horse was something to ride to death. All these people saw and hack and ride on the bit. That’s what got us into trouble with those race-horses, and that’s what got to me from you, the first minute in front of el cuartel—to see a white man sitting a horse and knowing what he was doing and what her mouth was made of.’
‘Your father told me all about Mamie,’ Elbert said.
‘All the telling in the world wouldn’t do it, if a man didn’t have the feel of a bridle-rein on his own hook.’