Chapter XXXI. The Trap
He had already covered a good ten miles, and a large part of that through
extremely rough going, but the black ran with his head as high as the
moment he pulled out of Rickett that morning, and there was only enough
sweat to make his slender neck and greyhound flanks flash in the sun. Back
he winged toward Rickett, running as freely as the wild leader of a herd,
sometimes turning his fine head to one side to look back at the master or
gaze over the hills, sometimes slackening to a trot up a sharper ascent or
lengthening into a fuller gallop on an easy down-slope. There seemed no
purpose in the reins which were kept just taut enough to give the rider the
feel of his mount, and the left hand which held them was never still for a
moment, but played back and forth slightly with the motion of the head.
Except in times of crisis those reins were not for the transmission of
orders, it seemed, but they served as the wires through which the mind of
the man and the mind of the horse kept in telegraphic touch.
In the meantime Black Bart loafed behind, lingering on the crest of each
rise to look back, and then racing to catch up, but halfway back to Rickett
he came up beside the master, whining, and leaping as high as Barry's knee.
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