It is likewise true that
there are horses which stand out among their fellows, and this was such
a horse. He was such a creature that, if he had been led to a barrier,
the entire crowd at the race track would rise as one man and say: "What
is that horse?" There were points in which some critics would find
fault; most of the men of the mountain-desert; for instance, would have
said that the animal was too lightly and delicately limbed for long
endurance; but as the man of men bears the stamp of his greatness in his
forehead and his eyes, so it was with the black stallion. When the
thunder of the cavalcade had rushed upon him down the street he had
turned with catlike grace and raised his head to see; and his forehead
and his eyes arrested Jerry Strann like a levelled rifle. Looking at
that proud head one forgot the body of the horse, the symmetry of curves
exquisite beyond the sculptor's dream, the arching neck and the steel
muscles; one was only conscious of the great spirit. In Human beings we
refer to it as "personality."
After a little pause, seeing that no one offered a suggestion as to the
identity of the owner, Strann said, softly: "That hoss is mine."
It caused a stir in the crowd of his followers. In the mountain-desert
one may deal lightly with a man's wife and lift a random cow or two and
settle the score, at need, with a snug "forty-five" chunk of lead. But
with horses it is different.
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