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"He won't tackle it," Pete Lowry predicted philosophically while he turned the camera crank steadily round and round and held himself ready to "panoram" the scene if the pinto bolted. But the pinto, having Annie-Many-Ponies to reckon with, did not bolt. The braided rein-end of her squaw bridle lashed him stingingly; the moccasined heels dug without mercy into the tender part of his flanks.
I thought it not unlikely that the Austrians, in revenge for the loss we had inflicted upon them, might put us to the point of the bayonet. It would have been natural enough. Thinking thus, I ran back to a room, where a dozen of us yet remained, and there I saw Sergeant Pinto leaning against the wall, his arms hanging by his sides, and his face as white as paper.
In we went, an' the water hissed and sucked around our waists; but we crossed at about the same time, an' then it was only ten miles to the ranch house an' Barbie shook her quirt. Away shot the pinto, but Starlight had his fussy streak warm by this time, an' I let him edge ahead as fast as he wanted to.
He was smiling over his shoulder at the next rider in line, a heavy-set, squat figure on a round-bellied pinto. That smile was to go out presently like the flame of a blown candle. A third Mescalero followed. Like that of the others, his coarse, black hair fell to the shoulders, free except for a band that encircled the forehead. Still the boy did not fire.
We were immediately taken before the captain and his officers in full uniform, who stood round him on the quarter-deck. "What brought you out here?" he demanded of the mate, who from his dress seemed to be the officer. Pinto told the tale which had just been invented. "And what are those boats doing inshore of us?" was the next question.
That was where our judgment was weak. "You never could tell whether Pinto was goin' to finish under the wire, or out in the landscape. His eyes seemed to be sort of moverble, but like enough they'd get sot when he went to runnin'. Then he'd run whichever way he was lookin' at the time, or happened to think he was lookin'; and dependin' additional on what he thought he saw. And law!
He came lunging down over the first rim of the bluff; then since he must, he gathered himself for the ordeal and came leaping down and down and down, gaining momentum with every jump. He could not have stopped then if he had tried and Annie-Many-Ponies, still the incarnation of eager pursuit, would not let him try. At the big flat rock of which Jean had warned her, the pinto would have swerved.
On this occasion she was in the humor to dare the impossible; dare through sheer irritability of heart not mind. And so she saddled Lethe an unregenerate pinto of the Southern Trail, whose concealed devilishness forcibly reminded one of Balzac's famous description: "A clenched fist hidden in an empty sleeve."
The Girl's laugh rang out clearly. "Besides," she went on, her eyes fairly dancing with excitement, "I got a little pinto an' I'm all over the country on 'im. Finest little horse you ever saw! If I want to I can ride right down into the summer at the foothills with miles o' Injun pinks jest a-laffin' an' tiger lilies as mad as blazes.
You'd ought to hear her say 'Emmike'; it's certainly cute." We bet everything we had everything except that pinto pony and the cream-colored mare. I held them two out, for I figgered we was goin' to need 'em and need 'em bad, if my scheme worked out. The course it was a quarter-mile, straight-away was laid out along the bottom-land where the grass was thick and short.
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