Even as I mounted, an impatient
movement on the part of experienced Brown Jug told me that the
cattle had seen their opportunity.
I gathered the reins and spoke to the horse. He needed no
further direction, but set off at a wide angle, nicely
calculated, to intercept the truants. Brown Jug was a powerful
beast. The spring of his leap was as whalebone. The yellow
earth began to stream past like water. Always the pace increased
with a growing thunder of hoofs. It seemed that nothing could
turn us from the straight line, nothing check the headlong
momentum of our rush. My eyes filled with tears from the wind of
our going. Saddle strings streamed behind. Brown Jug's mane
whipped my bridle band. Dimly I was conscious of soapweed,
sacatone, mesquite, as we passed them. They were abreast and
gone before I could think of them or how they were to be dodged.
Two antelope bounded away to the left; birds rose hastily from
the grasses. A sudden chirk, chirk, chirk, rose all about me.
We were in the very centre of a prairie-dog town, but before I
could formulate in my mind the probabilities of holes and broken
legs, the chirk, chirk, chirking had fallen astern. Brown Jug
had skipped and dodged successfully.
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