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Terry loosed him. He did not break into a gallop, but fled down the road like an arrow, and the gray came back to him slowly and surely until the rider twisted around and swore in surprise. He touched his mount with the spurs; there was a fresh start from the gray, a lunge that kicked a little spurt of dust into the nostrils of El Sangre. He snorted it out.
At the end of a week Terry won a bet when a team of draught horses hitched onto his line could not pull El Sangre over his mark, and broke the rope instead. There was much work, too, in teaching him to turn in the cow-pony fashion, dropping his head almost to the ground and bunching his feet altogether. For nothing of its size that lives is so deft in dodging as the cow-pony.
Bareheaded, the wind stinging his cheek and flinging dry sand in his eyes, he gazed and wondered at the familiar but never negligible mystery of Sangre de Cristo. But suddenly he rose in his stirrups, and shaded his eyes with his hand to make out what it was that had caught his vision in that flood of red among the dunes. Again it came, a flash of yellow in the red. It was there, and gone.
Both these are used by the mountain Indians as fuel, but the Ratanhia is also a favourite remedy against dysentery and blood-spitting. Its extract is even exported to European countries, and is to be found in the shop of the apothecary. Now and then a beautiful species of locust was seen with its bright red flowers. It was the "Sangre de Christo" of the Peruvian flora.
An officer of Mendoza's guard had drawn it, and a dozen more were in the air in an instant, and then daggers by scores, keen, short, and strong, held high at arm's length, each shaking with the fury of the hand that held it. "Sangre! Sangre!" Some one had screamed out the wild cry of the Spanish soldiers 'Blood!
Above, reaching far into the blue dome of the sky, rose the peaks of the snow-capped Sangre de Christo, glistening in the morning sunlight, which threw gaunt, fantastic shadows in cañon and deep ravine. It was a wild, weird scene, where man, in strength and vigor, seems to imbibe a portion of the divine essence that lives, and moves, and has its being in the vast solitudes.
The sentence required no confirmation. 'You have no right to shoot him unless he tries to escape, I added, firmly. "'But sangre de Dios! the sergeant yelled out, bringing his musket up to the shoulder, 'he is escaping now. Look! "But I, as if that Gaspar Ruiz had cast a spell upon me, struck the musket upward, and the bullet flew over the roofs somewhere.
He leaned and murmured to the pricking ears with that soft, gentle voice which horses love. The glorious head of El Sangre went up a little, his tail flaunted somewhat more proudly; from the quiver of his nostrils to the ringing beat of his black hoofs he bespoke his confidence that he bore the king of men on his back.
Then the other rider jerked back on his reins with a resounding oath. Terry imitated; one call to El Sangre brought him back to a gentle amble. "Going to sell this damned skate," declared the stranger, a lean-faced man of middle age with big, patient, kindly eyes. "If he can't make another hoss break out of a pace, he ain't worth keeping!
And noiseless. Noiseless because heavy, clammy, thick, warm, sickening blood? Well might the land quake for the weight of such a tide! Why did Adele speak Spanish? Who prayed for him? ... "Alma de Cristo santisima santificame! "Sangre de Cristo, embriagame! "O buen Jesus, oye me!" ... Out of the darkness into such a light! An azure haze!
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