Elbert glanced around before shutting and padlocking the outer door of the cabin—a wonder passing through him about sometime coming back—with Bart.... In a sense, this meant his start for Sonora right now. Of course, there were matters to close up in San Forenso—affairs of the Dry Cache, of banks, papers and probate, but Mamie was now to be ridden down trail and it was like the beginning of a new life. From the doorway, he studied the mare’s sculptured head. There she stood, as if listening to sounds which she alone could detect.
Practically his first experience in saddling anything but the wooden horse. The horses he had failed to tarry on at Heaslep’s had been saddled by others—even old Chester on that unforgettable day. He knew the straps and cinches—part of his recent business, and Mamie wasn’t too restive, so far. Funny, Elbert thought, that he should have sold that Pitcairn stock-saddle to himself, after all.
‘Thirty-eight pounds,’ he muttered.
Trouble came to Mamie’s eyes as he undertook to tuck the steel between her teeth. She didn’t like the way he went about it; also it seemed, he had to mash her ears about to get the bridle on. She was nervous as a child being severely washed. Finally the man got his foot in the stirrup and raised himself. With a little dance to the right, the mare glided from under, and stood with trailing bridle-rein, looking at him, confused and incredulous.
‘I guess I couldn’t have stepped up on her in the way she’s used to,’ he remarked.
He tried again. Mamie seemed to have a certain responsibility for him this time, like a mother-hen trying to get on with an unfamiliar chick. But she had her own mysterious forces and impulses to cope with, too. She had been penned-in for altogether too many days and darted out of the corral gate with a suddenness that jerked the man’s body and arm back to keep his place. Mamie’s head flung upward in utter dismay, and the awfulness of having put weight like that on her tender mouth, uncentered Elbert entirely for the time. It was like clashing gears in a fine machine that has been desperately hard to obtain—only ten times—infinitely worse—this, a living thing, cherished from a baby by an old man who had been a horseman all his days.
The saddle kept slipping forward. Elbert hadn’t known at first how to tighten the girths. He didn’t dare to look underneath. At least, there was no blood mixed with the foam around the steel of her bit.... Twenty-two miles down trail, and long before the end, his own agony took the edge of strain from the fierce imaginings of damage he was doing the mare. Mamie didn’t stop to walk; she danced down trail—to friends of hers at Mort Cotton’s ranch. It was as if she expected, when she got there, to hear the voice that had been silent so long. A hundred times Elbert thought of this. His bones crunched; he felt the scald of blood and sweat on his thighs. But once or twice, even in the pain, a flash of splendor went through him—at her arched lathered neck, the lift of power from beneath, some new magic from the earth—
No need to ask the way to Mort Cotton’s place. Mamie veered to the left, at the end of San Forenso’s main street, following the wagon tracks at a show-trot to the wide gateway, where she was welcomed from all quarters at once. Mort Cotton called his greeting from the doorway of the ranch house, as Elbert let himself down, steadying himself before letting go of the pommel. Mort approached. What was left of the younger man withered as those eyes, under the white bushy brows, fixed upon the mare. This was far more severe than being appraised himself.
‘Lucky old Bob couldn’t see her, with the saddle as far back as that,’ Mr. Cotton remarked.
Elbert had ceased to breathe. Raw and angry patches wavered in imagination before his eyes, as the saddle was being removed. Hide and hair unruffled—a flood of thankfulness went through him. He moved around to Mamie’s far side and all looked intact there, too. Mort’s twisted hand was now knuckling down the buttons of the mare’s spine.