The Asper
Ninety miles of ground, at least, had been covered by the black stallion,
since he left Rickett that morning, yet when he galloped across the plain
in full sight of Wilsonville there were plenty of witnesses who vowed that
Satan ran like a colt frolicking over a pasture. Mark Retherton knew
better, and the posse to a man felt the end was near. They changed saddles
in a savage silence and went down the street out of town with a roar of
racing hoofs.
And Barry too, as he watched them whip around the corner of the last house
and streak across the fields, knew that the end of the ride was near.
Strength, wind and nerve were gone from Satan; his hoofs pounded the ground
with the stamp of a plowhorse; his breath came in wheezes with a rattle
toward the end; the tail no longer fluttered out straight behind. Yet when
the master leaned and called he found something in his great heart with
which to answer. A ghost of his old buoyancy came in his stride, the
drooping head rose, one ear quivered up, and he ran against the challenge
of those fresh ponies from Wilsonville.
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