Rocks, shrubs darted past him,
and he felt a gradual settling of the horse beneath him as the strides
lengthened, From behind a yell of dismay, and with a backward glance he
saw every man of the posse leaning forward and swinging his quirt. An
instant later half a dozen of the ragged little hills closed between them.
Once fairly into the heart of the Morgans, he called the stallion back from
the racing stride to a long canter, and from the gallop to a rapid trot,
for in this broken country it was wearing on an animal to maintain a lope
up hill and down the quick, jerking falls. The cowpuncher hates the trot,
for his ponies are not built for it, but the deep play of Satan's fetlock
joints broke the hard impacts; his gait now was hardly more jarring than
the flow of the single-foot in an ordinary animal.
Black Bart, who had been running directly under the nose of the stallion,
now skirted away in the lead. Here and there he twisted among the gullies
at a racing clip, his head high, and always he picked out the smoothest
ground, the easiest rise, the gentlest descent which lay more or less
straight in the line of his master's flight.
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