So for an instant she waited before it was borne
in on her that the voice was a human one, and that the heaven
from which it descended was the hilltop above her.
A wild laugh, followed by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the
song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and
again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard,
sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw
silhouetted against the skyline a horse and his rider fighting
for mastery.
The battle was superb while it lasted. The horse had been a
famous outlaw, broken to the saddle by its owner out of the sheer
passion for victory, but there were times when its savage
strength rebelled at abject submission, and this was one of them.
It swung itself skyward, and came down like a pile-driver,
camel-backed, and without joints in the legs. Swiftly it rose
again lunging forward and whirling in the air, then jarred down
at an angle. The brute did its malevolent best, a fury incarnate.
But the ride, was a match, and more than a match, for it. He sat
the saddle like a Centaur, with the perfect: unconscious grace of
a born master, swaying in his seat as need was, and spurring the
horse to a blinder fury.
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