In
ten minutes Grey Molly dipped out of sight among the hills.
After the first hour Barry could have cut away across country with little
fear of discovery from the sheriff, but he was in no hurry to escape.
Sometimes he dismounted and looked to his cinches and talked to the horse.
Grey Molly listened with pricking ears and often canted her head to one
side as though she strove to understand the game.
It was a new and singular pleasure to Barry. He was accustomed to the
exhaustless, elastic strength of Satan, with the cunning brain of a beast
of prey and the speed of an antelope. On the black horse he could have
ridden circles around that posse all day. But Grey Molly was a different
problem. She was not a force to be simply directed and controlled. She was
something to be helped. Her very weakness, compared with the stallion,
appealed to him. And it was a thrilling pleasure to feel his power over her
grow until she, also, seemed to have entered the game.
A game it was, as he had said to Vic when they parted, with the rather
essential difference that in this pastime one was tagged with a forty-five
caliber chunk of lead and was quite apt to remain "it" for the remainder of
eternity.
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