Читать книгу Lucky Larribee - Frederick Schiller Faust - Страница 12

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Now, when young Larribee rode the stallion through the crowd once more, he was reining it right and left, and he seemed, indeed, to be using the strength of his hands freely. As a matter of fact, his touch was softer than the fall of feathers. He was simply suggesting to the great horse, as it were, how it could pick and choose its way through the human mass.

When Sky Blue felt the twitch upon the bit and turned his head a trifle, he could not help seeing the gap which always appeared in the throng. So he responded readily, and after a few times, he was able to understand that the man was not fighting against him, but was simply helping him, from a superior angle, to solve the difficult problem of working a way through that mass.

The stallion was happy as a man is happy in finding a true companion, a sympathetic spirit. He had had stable friends and pasture mates, of course, but this man was different, in that he could give more than the beasts could ever give. The man was neither more nor less; he was different; he seemed to understand; and there was always that mysterious electric current flowing down through the reins as if through charged wires; and there was always the genial flow of that voice, awakening an answering harmony in the mind of the stallion.

Dan Gurry had broken through the crowd. He was quite pale, and his eyes burned under the deep shadow of his brows. His voice was low, and carried through sheer vibrancy.

“Larribee! Larribee?”

“Yes, sir?” called Larribee.

“Try him in the open. Try him across the fields. Let him have his head on the straightaway. Wait a moment. Where’s Colonel Pratt and his thoroughbred? He’s surely here.”

The colonel was there. He was found, and he came forward, a straight, lean, iron-grey man of sixty, with a stern face. He was riding a mare. She was ten years old. She was a little over at the knees and she hobbled a little in her walk. But her gallop was still the true swallow’s flight, across country or over the level. The colonel loved her as the apple of his eye.

“Well, Mr. Gurry,” said the colonel. “What will you have of me?”

“You’ve got a fine mare, Colonel Pratt,” said Gurry. “I just saw her this morning, and I didn’t need to have her pointed out to me. I could see her points. She can move, sir, I’ll put my bet.”

“Yes,” said the colonel, with considerable pride. “She can move a little.”

“Now, then, sir,” said Gurry, “not that I want to offend you, sir, or to bother you too much, but I would lay a little wager just in friendly rivalry, sir, that if you’ll try her against the stallion, he’ll beat her; and he has a two-hundred-pound man on his back, too!”

The colonel weighed a hundred and thirty, dressed for the field! His mare was in perfect fettle, iron-hard, her ribs showing when she stretched out in a gallop, whereas it was plain that the stallion lacked exercise, and there were ripples along his flanks which were not muscle, but sheer fat. The colonel was a fair man.

“I gather that you’ve never trained that stallion across country, Mr. Gurry?” he said.

“He’s jumped pasture fences for his own pleasure,” said Gurry, “and that’s the only training he’s ever had.”

“The very best training in the world, in some ways,” said the colonel. “That’s why the Irish horses jump so well. Still, a man in the saddle makes a difference. And two hundred pounds of man on a horse that he’s not familiar with is—”

“I understand you,” said Gurry. “Still, I’m fair mad to see the foot of Sky Blue tried out, sir. Now, you take a spin across to that bunch of trees and around them—I’d call that about half a mile out, sir, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d shoot it for a thousand yards,” said the colonel, turning a critical eye in that direction.

“Now, then,” said Gurry, fairly panting with eagerness. “Just in the purest friendship, sir, would it interest you to try the mare against the stallion for five hundred, sir?”

“I only bet—” began the colonel. Then he changed what he was about to say, for he was scrupulously polite to everyone, even those whom he considered whole worlds beneath him in social stature.

“You don’t need to tempt me with a bet, Mr. Gurry,” said he. “I’ll try the mare against the stallion, if you wish. And we’ll both keep our five hundred dollars safe, if you please.”

“Thank you, Colonel Pratt,” said Gurry. “That’s a gentleman’s offer, and it’s a mighty great pleasure to me, sir.”

He hurried to the side of the stallion and Larribee.

“D’you think that you can jump him?” he said.

“I can ride him over a mountain of glass,” said Larribee, through his teeth, for the joy of a new power was making all his nerves jump with joy. In the saddle on that horse, he felt complete for the first time in his life. He had a sense of pride as high-headed as the pride of the stallion he rode upon.

Behind them the murmuring of the crowd was like the humming of a great hive of bees in the ear of Larribee. And he could hardly keep from laughing, there was such joy in him.

The colonel turned in his saddle.

“Mr. Larribee,” said he, “you’ve done a brave and brilliant thing to-day. In the matter of this little trial, if it is your wish, I’ll ride the mare just hard enough to make an even show of it.”

“Colonel Pratt,” said Larribee, “that’s mighty kind of you, but if you please, take everything you can out of the mare. I think you’ll need to if you’re to make a good showing with her.”

He smiled a little, in spite of himself.

His words had been quite enough. There was no need for the smile. The colonel turned a bright pink.

“Very well,” said he. “Are you ready?”

“Ready,” said Larribee, straightening the stallion towards the mark.

“Then here we go,” said the colonel, and he sent the mare away like a shot.

Larribee spanked the side of Sky Blue with his hand. And the stallion merely turned his head, curiously. A shout of disappointment and amusement came from the crowd. Larribee could hear, he thought, the groan of Gurry. So he called softly to the stallion, and the big fellow broke into a trot, then a canter.

As Larribee called a second time and struck his heel against the side of the roan, Sky Blue caught sight of the mare winging her lovely way across the first fence.

In that instant he knew; and half a count later, Larribee was almost torn from his seat by the lurch of the horse gathering way. In two bounds he seemed to be at full speed.

He did not jump the fence; that is, there seemed to be no extra lifting of legs, no gathering to clear it, but one instant it was before Larribee; the next instant, he was over it, and the fence was well behind.

He gasped. Before the gasp was finished, a ditch opened before them, and he almost fell out of the saddle as the stallion jumped thirty feet to clear it!

So rapidly were they going, the landscape near at hand dissolved softly, in a blur, and the distant hills went walking smoothly and steadily past them. The blast of that galloping tore at the mouth of Larribee, and fluttered his eyelids. He bowed forward to butt it and out of his lips came a thin, small, sharp straining cry.

Sky Blue lifted his head and pricked his ears. He thought that he had heard that sound before, the scream of a hawk, half lost in a windy sky, or was it the far-distant neigh of a neighbouring stallion from another hill-top?

But, with pricked ears and head lifted for a moment, he listened to the cry of joy which had rushed from the throat of the man, and in that instant they were welded together, made of one flesh, of one brain, of one mighty spirit!

Strength was in the grip of the man’s knees, but only enough to keep him in true rhythm with the stallion’s gallop; strength was in his pull upon the reins, but only enough to balance the striding of Sky Blue.

They caught the good mare at the clump of trees, and the colonel looked around at them as though the earth had been split and the steeds of Poseidon had risen out of the gap.

All the way back from the trees to the head of the straight road, the mare led, but Larribee was holding the stallion in, not by might of hand, but talking quietly and using the reins for suggestion rather than control, so that Sky Blue ran with one ear forward, and one ear canted back to listen.

In this manner they reached the straight road with the mare a good two or three lengths in the lead. And then Larribee called on the big horse. He called on him in spirit, and he called on him in fact, with a great ringing voice, and Sky Blue reached the mare in half a dozen bounds.

Larribee would never forget the startled, bewildered face of Colonel Pratt as he and his mare were jerked away to the rear. After that, he forgot the colonel, forgot the mare, forgot the race. He was only intent upon the dazzling speed of the blue horse.