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At the hitching rack he stepped into the saddle of a diminutive horse, whirled it into the street with a staggering jerk of the reins, and buried the spurs deep in the cow-pony's flanks. The poor brute snorted and flirted its heels in the air, but Langley wrapped his long legs around the barrel of his mount and goaded it again.
If in the summer the alkali dust of the street formed into miniature hills of grayish white which sifted into surrounding hollows under the whipping tread of the cow-pony's hoofs, Texas likened it unto ruffled waters that seek a level. The same condition in another town would have drawn a curse from him.
Then he swung himself into the saddle and rode away, straight down the narrow arroyo, out beyond its lower widening, into the vast plains the hither side of the Chiricahuas. The alkali dust was snatched by the wind from beneath his horse's feet. Smaller and smaller he dwindled, rising and falling, rising and falling in the monotonous cow-pony's lope.
His head was not stretched out as a cow-pony's head is stretched when he runs; he held it rather high, as though he carried in his big heart a reserve strength ready to be called on for any emergency. For all that, it was running such as Terry had never known. The wind became a blast, jerking the brim of his sombrero up and whistling in his hair.
After a time he picked up his string of fish, mounted, and jogged loosely away at the cow-pony's little Spanish trot toward the south. Over a week later, having caught golden trout and climbed Mount Whitney, we followed him and so came to the great central camp at Monache Meadows.
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