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The horse staggered as the weight came out of the stirrup and that made Marianne watch with a keener interest, for she had seen a great deal of merciless riding since she came West and it always angered her. The cowpunchers used "hoss-flesh" rather than horses, a distinction that made her hot. If a horse were not good enough to be loved it was not good enough to be ridden.
Pa saw me and grinned from ear to ear. "'Say, Alf, he said, 'you are always making your brags about knowing hoss-flesh; what do you think of this prince of the turf? "I walked round in front of the animal to size him up, and my heart sunk 'way down in my boots. 'Pa, I said, 'it looks to me like he's got "big shoulders."
The other members of the posse set to work silently changing their saddles to the new relay, and Mark Retherton tossed his answer over his shoulder to Johnny Gasney while he drew his cinch brutally tight. "They's a pile of hoss-flesh in these parts, but they ain't more'n one Barry. You gents can say good-bye to your hosses unless we nail him before they're run down."
But the excellence of the opportunity, the best he had ever had in his life, the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in number, "the primest and beautifullest critturs," he averred, "what war ever seed in a hoss-pound," with a notion which now suddenly beset his grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could "make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh," proved too much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of war in his own mind, he came to a resolution "to steal the lot."
It's sound in wind an' limb, fourteen han's high, an' in all ways a beautiful piece of hoss-flesh. Now, gentlemen, how much am I bid for this cayuse? Remember, before you make me any offer, that this animal is broke to punching cows an' is a first-class cayuse."
"Three years ago, me and Kit Carson had to scoot up here to get out of the reach of something like two hundred Comanches, under that prime devil Valo-Velasquiz. They shot Kit's horse, and mine dropped dead just as we reached the bottom of the hill, so we couldn't do anythin' more in the way of hoss-flesh.
Under the influence of the condition, however, whatever it was, he became unjust, and began to call his horse names. "What! you not 'bey orders? you ole screw you unnat'ral villin you obs'nit lump o' hoss-flesh! Stan' still, I say!" Need we say that the horse refused to stand still? Again, and again, and over again, the negro tried to lay hands on the animal, and as often did he fail.
At any rate, he reflected with satisfaction, he could extricate himself from the tangle, and in that, at least, he felt that he had the advantage of Long. "I see an old fellow over there at that covered wagon that was bantering me for a hoss-trade the other day," he courageously threw into the gap. "I believe I'll go see how he talks now. There will be a sight of hoss-flesh change hands to-day.
He soon came out, leading the horse he used in his journeys to and from the American camp, and bearing saddle and bridle on his arm. The two men speedily adjusted these, whereupon Philip mounted. "Bring or send the beast back by night," said Meadows, handing over the key, with which he had meanwhile relocked the door of his improvised stable. "Hoss-flesh is damn' skeerce these times."
She is waiting for the coming of a real man, she is waiting for the coming of a true master out of the horizon!" Marianne had known thoroughbreds since she was a child and after coming West she had become acquainted with mere "hoss-flesh," but today for the first time she felt that the horse is not meant by nature to be the servant of man but that its speed is meant to ensure it sacred freedom.
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