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I couldn't join him in his mirth over that incident, for I happened to remember the look on Lady Alicia's face when she once watched Dinky-Dunk mount his mustang and ride away. "Aren't men lawds of creation?" she had dreamily inquired.
Won't you, Lolita? You will, my pet!" At this the mustang gives a soft whimper, as if answering the interrogatory. "I shall myself go before," the girl continues. "So let loose the rein, and leave Lolita to take her own way." After giving this injunction, she turns abruptly to the right, where a path almost perpendicular leads down a ledge, traversing the facade of the cliff.
The youth had penetrated barely a hundred yards from the point where he left his mustang, and was picking his way cautiously forward, when he was startled by hearing voices. The words were too low for him to distinguish them, but he instantly stopped with his Winchester ready for use.
Swiftly a running noose, fashioned from the ends of the lariat, was slipped over the captive's neck. A man grasped the bit of the mustang. Before him, the crowd began to give way. The great bull-necked leader Mick Kennedy, every one now saw it was held up his hand for silence, and turned to the helpless figure astride the pony.
Bickford, gazing doubtfully at the mustang, who was evidently enjoying his evening repast. "Oh, a hearty meal will make him good-natured. That is the way it acts with boys and men, and animals are not so very different." "I guess you're right," said Joshua. "When I wanted to get a favor out of dad, I always used to wait till the old man had got his belly full. That made him kinder good-natured."
"But, Paw," said Cressy, laying her hand languidly on her father's sleeve without the least change of color or amused expression. "This gentleman has come over here on a compromise." "On a WHICH?" said McKinstry, glancing scornfully out of the door for some rare species of mustang vaguely suggested to him in that unfamiliar word. "To see if we couldn't come to some fair settlement," said Stacey.
Immersed to the chin, and sometimes covered by a more violent wave, the sound of the river grew at once strangely dim, but he felt the force of the current tugging at him like a thousand invisible hands. He began to wish that he had taken off his boots before entering, for they weighted his feet so that it made him leg-weary to kick. Nevertheless he trusted in the brave heart of the mustang.
He rounded a huge dome, climbed a low, rolling ridge, descended and ascended, and came out upon the rim of a steep-walled amphitheater. Along the rim was a yard-wide level, with the chasm to the left and steep slope to the right. There was no time to flinch at the danger, when an even greater danger menaced from the rear. Nas Ta Bega led, and his mustang kept at his heels.
The Wyoming hills were split by many such valleys and many such bare, grassy ridges sloped up toward the mountains. Upon the side of one ridge, the highest, there stood a solitary mustang, haltered with a lasso. He was a ragged, shaggy, wild beast, and there was no saddle or bridle on him, nothing but the halter.
At the same time he continued to talk soothingly to the mustang and patted him on the neck. Then, fearing he would breathe his last if the lariat remained as it was, he drew his knife and cut the leather. In a twinkle the whole manner of the mustang changed, and, before Ralph could reach his big brother's side, the steed was off like a streak of lightning, with Dan clinging fast to his neck.
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