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Updated: June 21, 2025
Tom and Harry had also come this far. In the background the halted crowd watched in suspense as George Ashby galloped over the treacherous sand. Several times the pony's hoofs were seen to sink, yet each time the animal seemed able to draw his feet out of the sand and go on again. "It's a crazy man's luck," cried an Arizona man thickly.
It was like the first night of a fever, the whizzing of the wheels, the ding-dong of the pony's hoofs, the silence all round, the feeling of stress and insane hurrying on, the throbbing of my head, and the scorching heat. I'll swear no fever I've ever had was worse than that last two miles. As I reached the Delhi walls I took one look at the clock. There was barely a minute left. "By Jove!"
It was six months since Banneker had bought him: six months and a week since Willis Enderby had been buried. And the pony's rider had in his pocket a letter, of date only four days old, from Willis Enderby to Camilla Van Arsdale. It was dated from the Governor's Mansion, Albany, New York. Banneker had written it himself, the night before.
All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose. "Well, Rae Malgregor," he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right, though I certainly don't know where she got her information. I am a Liar. The pony's name is not yet 'Beautiful Pretty-Thing'! I am a Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I am a Robber!
Fresh straw was spread in the shrine and my bed set up on it; the pigs were given my pony's stable, as I preferred his company to theirs; and I had an unusually pleasant evening, spite of the fact that the roofs of the adjoining buildings were crowded with onlookers, mostly children, until it grew too dark for them to see anything.
Naked, save for a breech-clout, with a narrow red band of dyed buckskin about his forehead, in which sticks a feather, each rides silent, grim, cruel, a hideous human reptile, as native to the desert as is the Gila monster. The horse is saddleless. For a bridle, the warrior uses a piece of grass rope twisted about the pony's lower jaw. His legs droop laxly by the horse's sides.
Half-a-dozen yards were between the charger's head and the pony's flanks. She waited for us to march by, without attempting to conceal that we were the objects of her inspection, and we in good easy swing of the feet gave her a look as we lifted our hats. That look was to me like a net thrown into moonlighted water: it brought nothing back but broken lights of a miraculous beauty.
It's a big day, but that pony's a rum un, and can jump his own height easy. He'll be welcome home to-night. 'I daresay he will, and no wonder. The missus must ha' been awful frightened, and the young ladies too. Good-night, Jack; and we rattled off.
On they went, the pony first, the crouching man beside, his body even with the pony's front legs, his eyes peering through the wind-tossed mane. First to the right, then to the left they tacked, halting at intervals, as a pony wandering aimlessly will halt now and then to feed; but never losing the general direction, always bit by bit drawing nearer and nearer.
"All right!" said I with a sort of impulse, "I'll take it." And so I did. I had to start just under the arch of the Cashmere gate, by a pistol shot, fired from overhead. I didn't quite care for the look of the pony's ears while I was waiting for it the crowd had frightened him a bit I think.
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