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Updated: September 3, 2025
But the road-agents only pause a moment in their song to send back a wild, sarcastic laugh; then they resume it, and merrily dash along up the gulch, the ringing of iron-shod hoofs beating a strange tatoo to the sound of the music.
Not a soul was to be seen; only trees and bushes, and now and again a house. The only sound to be heard was the rolling of balls in the bowling-alley, like distant thunder on a summer day. It belonged to the silence. But now the uneven stones of the market-place were ground under iron-shod heels.
Slowly the Antiguo Mahones swung parallel to the quay wall, and then a derrick chain was hauled out and I heard the scrape of the big gangway as it drew along the gravel, and the thud of its iron-shod heel as it fell on deck and bridged the intervening two fathoms of water.
Under ordinary conditions, at a depth of some twenty feet in water, the view becomes exceedingly blurred, but here the waters seemed to be impregnated with a luminous fluid, and Benito was able to descend still lower without the darkness concealing the river bed. The young man slowly made his way along the bank. With his iron-shod spear he probed the plants and rubbish accumulated along its foot.
Roger's right arm was so badly strained that it seemed to fail him, and before he could get out of the way, the rearing horse he was trying to hold struck him down and trampled upon him. He was snatched out from under the iron-shod hoofs by the fast gathering crowd, but found himself unable to rise. "Take me to Bellevue," he said decisively.
For Columbine, the most interesting moment of this incident was when the mustang raised his head to look at his legs, in order to see what had been done to them. There was something almost human in that look. It expressed intelligence and fear and fury. The cowboys released his legs and let him get up. Whang stamped his iron-shod hoofs. "It was a mean trick, Whang," said Columbine.
The other horses shied, frustrating the efforts of the orderly to catch the flying bridle, and the danger from the huge, towering brown body and dangling iron-shod hoofs was very real, seemed inevitable, when a man in white drill and wearing a Panama hat ran out of the crowd, sprang up and deftly caught the loose bridoon-rein, mastered the frightened beast, and dragged it back into the roadway, in time to avert harm.
At the same time the wind increased its violence, and the cold became more penetrating. I pulled my fingers out of the digits of my woollen gloves, and gripped my iron-shod baton between thumb and knuckles. We now had our bearings, thanks to the momentary glance, and it behooved us not to lose them, for the storm was every instant growing worse.
The carts are picturesque, but clumsy; they are made of wicker-work, and the iron-shod wheels are solidly attached to the axle, so that all revolves together, amid fearful creaking. The people could not be induced to use a cart with movable wheels which was imported from America, nor will they even grease their axles, because the noise is held to drive away witches.
The citizens returned, the portals of the gate closed, the old lock creaked, the iron-shod beams fell back into their places, the chains of the drawbridge rattled audibly, and the assembled throng now knew that the Englishmen had been refused admittance to the city. Loud cheers, mingled with many an expression of displeasure, were heard.
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