"The Plains," she said, "how big--how endless they are!
Is it not all wild and free?"
Always she came back to that same word "free." Always she spoke of
wildness, of freedom.
"For all one could tell, there might be lions and tigers and camels and
gazelles out there." She gestured vaguely toward the wide horizon. "It
is the desert."
We rode on for a time, silent, and I began to hum to myself the rest of
the words of an old song, then commonly heard:
"O come with me, and be my love,
For thee the jungle's depths I'll rove.
I'll chase the antelope over the plain,
And the tiger's cub I'll bind with a chain,
And the wild gazelle with the silvery feet
I'll give to thee for a playmate sweet."
"Poets," said I, "can very well sing about such things, but perhaps they
could not practice all they sing. They always--"
"Hush!" she whispered, drawing her horse gently down to a walk, and
finally to a pause. "Look! Over there is one of the wild gazelles."
I followed the direction of her eyes and saw, peering curiously down at
us from beyond the top of a little ridge, something like a hundred yards
away, the head, horns, and neck of a prong-horn buck, standing facing
us, and seeming not much thicker than a knife blade.
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