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At length he began to appear on horseback; and as he had hitherto been in the habit of taking that exercise bare-backed, now he was resolved to get into a saddle, and ride like a gentleman.
He told me how he'd gone back to say good-bye to Jeanie how the poor girl went into fits, and he couldn't leave her. By the time she got better the cottage was surrounded by police; there was no use being shot down without a chance, so he gave himself up. 'My word, Dick, he said, 'I wished for a bare-backed horse, and a deep gully, then; but it wasn't to be.
From the time they're able to walk, boys and girls, they're able to ride, and ride well. See the girls jump on bare-backed, with nothing but a gunny-bag under 'em, and ride over logs and stones, through scrub and forest, down gullies, or along the side of a mountain. And a horse race, don't they love it?
Then she told him how Hope had seen her drowning, a mile off, with it, and ridden a bare-backed steed to her rescue. "God bless him!" cried Walter. "He is our best friend. Might I borrow this famous glass?" "Oh," said Mary, "I am not going into any more streams; I am not so brave now as I used to be." "Please lend it me, for all that." "Of course I will, if you wish it."
Then came the captives, some riding horses bare-backed, or held in place before black-bearded riders women mostly these last, with faces white-set and strange of eye, or all beblubbered with weeping. Then came a man or two also on horseback, old and reverend.
Where, now, thousands of Moslems, some on foot, some on richly caparisoned steeds, were passing to and fro, turbaned and robed after the manner of their tribe, with such adornment as they had stolen or adopted from intercourse with splendor-loving nations, and where long trains of camels dragged quarried stones to the building, in former times only an occasional ox-cart with creaking wheels was to be seen, an Egyptian riding an ass or a bare-backed nag, and now and then a few insolent Greek soldiers.
Slow-moving, country figures, passing vehicles, a herd of some eight or ten cows preceded by a diabolic looking billy-goat, and followed by a lad astride the hind-quarters of a bare-backed donkey grew out of pallid nothingness as the carriage came abreast of them, and receded with mysterious rapidity into nothingness again. The effect was curiously fantastic and unreal.
Meanwhile I sat with my back against the trunk of the great tree and tried to realize the situation. Looking to my left I saw too good horses one bare-backed, and one with a rudely made lady's saddle on it. By the side of the horses were two dogs, of a stout greyhound breed, that sat watching us, and near the dogs lay a dead Oribé buck, which they had evidently been coursing.
But my father, at this epoch, could catch not a glimpse of it. The masking day, and the ensuing night of the moccolo, were the culminating features of the carnival; and it was on the afternoon of this day, I think, that the horse-race, with bare-backed horses, took place.
"I was only figuring that it's a bit too ornamental for its present purpose. I see the girth has been broken and mended mended with a doubtful piece of string. Why wasn't it sent to the saddler t' be properly fixed up? I've half a notion ter chuck it right away and ride bare-backed. But there ain't time to fool around now. So long, Cully."
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