"Nor is all our fun of hunt days. Between times the lads are always larkin' and puttin' up games on each other out of the stock of divilment that won't keep till the next run, each never quite so happy as when he can git the best of a mate on a trade or a wager.

"One day little Raven and I galloped over to Lory's place.

"'Whatever mischief are you and His Wisdom up to?' sings out Lory to Raven, the minute we stopped at his porch.

"'Nary a mischief,' answers Raven; 'want some help of you.'

"'Give it a name,' says Lory.

"'Easy,' says Raven; 'the master's got a new fad--crazy to mount the hunt on white horses. I've old Sol here, and Jack has a pair of handy white ones for the two whips, but where to get a white mount for Jack stumps us. Jogged over to see if you could help us out.'

"Lory was lollin' in an easy-chair, lookin' out west across his spring lot. Directly I saw a twinkle in his eye, and followin' the line of his glance, there slouchin' in a fence corner I saw Lory's old white work-mare, Molly. Sometimes Molly pulled the buggy and the little Lings, but usually it was a plough or a mower for hers. I'd heard Lory say she was eighteen years old and that once she was gray, but now she's white as a first snow-fall.

"'How would old gray Molly do, Raven?' presently asks Lory.

"'Do? Has she ever hunted?' asks Raven.

"'Divil a hunt of anything but a chance for a rest,' says Lory; 'never had a saddle on, as far as I know, but she has the quarters and low sloping shoulders of a born jumper, and it's you must admit it. Let's have a look at her.'

"So out across the spring lot the three of us went, to the corner where Molly was dozin'. And true for Lory it was, the old lady had fine points; when lightly slapped with Raven's crop she showed spirit and a good bit of action.

"'She's sure got a good strain in her,' says Raven; 'where did you get her, Lory?'

"'Had her twelve years,' says Lory; 'brought her on from my Wyoming ranch; she and a skullful of experience and a heartful of disappointment made up about all two bad winters left of my ranch investments. The freight on her made her look more like a back-set than an a.s.set, but she was a link of the old life I couldn't leave.'

"'Well, give her a try out,' laughs Raven, 'and if she'll run a bit and jump, we may have some fun pa.s.sin' her up to Jack.'

"So Lory takes her to the stable, has her saddled and mounts, and I hope never to have another rub-down if she didn't gallop on like she'd never done anything else--stiff in the pasterns and hittin' the ground fit to bust herself wide open, but poundin' along a fair pace. Then we went into a narrow lane and I gave her a lead over some low bars, and here came game old Molly stretchin' over after me like fences and her were old stable-mates.

"'Well, I _will_ be d.a.m.ned,' says Raven; 'she's a h.o.a.ry wonder. Give her a week of handlin' and trim her up, and it'll be Jack for mother at a stiff price; he's so bent on his fad, he'll take a chance on her age.'

"And then it was clinkin' gla.s.ses and roarin' laughter in the house with them, while I began tippin' Molly a few useful points at the game as soon as the groom left us in adjoinin' stalls.

"Four days later Lory brought Molly over to the hunt-club mews, and if I'd not been on to their mischievous plot, I'll be fired if I'd known her. It was a cunnin' one, was Lory, and he'd banged her tail, hogged her mane, clipped her pasterns, polished her hoofs, groomed, fed up, and conditioned her, and (I do believe) polished her yellow old fangs, till she looked as fit a filly as you'd want to see.

"And soon after, when Molly was unsaddled and stalled, into an empty box alongside of me slips Lory with Tom, the best whip and seat of our hunt, and says Lory: 'You never seem to mind riskin' your neck, Tom.'

"'Thank ye kindly, sir,' says Tom; 'hall in the day's work.'

"'Well, if you'll give the old gray mare a week's practice at wall and timber, gettin' out early when none but the sun and the pair of you are yet up, I'll give you the little rifle you lovin'ly handled at my place the other day. But mind, it's your neck she may break at the first wall, for I've niver taken her over anything much higher than a pig sty.'

"'Right-o, sir,' says Tom; 'an' there's any jump in the old girl, I'll git it out of 'er.'

"The next Sat.u.r.day afternoon, the biggest meet of the season, up rides that divil of a Lory on Molly, him in a brand-new suit of ridin' togs and her heavy-curbed and martingaled like she was a wild four-year-old, the pair lookin' so fine I scarce knew the man or Raven the mare.

"'Hi, there, Lory!' says Raven; 'wherever did you get the corkin' white un?'

"'Sh-h-h! you d.a.m.n fool,' says Lory.

"'The h.e.l.l you say!' whispers Raven, reins aside, chucklin' low to the two of us, and with a knee-press which I knew meant, 'Sol, jist you watch 'em!'

"And we were no more than turned about when up rides the master, Jack, both ears pointin' Molly, and says:

"'Good-looker you have there, Lory. New purchase?

"'No, indeed,' says Lory; 'old hunter I've had some years; brought her on from the West; just up off gra.s.s and not quite prime yet; guess she'll finish, though.

"Think of it--the nerve of the divil--and him knowin' she was more likely to finish at the first fence than ever to reach the check. For the day's course was a full ten-mile run, and a check was laid half-way for a blow or a change of mounts.

"Presently the hounds opened at the 'throw-in,' an Irish pack it takes near a steeplechase pace to stay with, and we were off on as stiff a course as even Lemon County can show. And a holy miracle was Lory's ridin' that day. For nigh four miles he held tight behind two duffers who, while up on top-notchers, pulled their mounts so heavily that they took a top rail off nearly every fence they rose to and swerved for low wall-gaps, till he'd got Molly's nerves up a bit. Then, takin' a chance on the last mile, Lory threw crop and spur into her and raced straight ahead, liftin' her over wall and timber to try the best, until close up on Jack. Just then Jack turned and watched them, just as they were approachin' a heavy four-foot jump, a broad stone wall and ditch.

Sure, I thought it was all up with Lory, but at it he hurled her, and I'll be curbed if she didn't take it as cleverly as I could.

"Old Molly finished third at the check, but at the expense of a pair of badly torn and bleedin' knees, got sc.r.a.pin' over stone and wood, which that rascal of a Lory hid by swervin' to a white clay bank and plasterin' her wounds with the clay, and then she was led away by his groom.

"Joggin' back from the 'worry' that evenin', Jack lay tight in Lory's flank till Lory had consented, apparently with great reluctance, to sell him Molly for five hundred dollars.

"The very next week, Jack, Raven, and the two whips turned out on white hunters, Jack of course upon Molly and happy over the successful workin' out of his fad. But good old Jack's happiness was short-lived, for after the 'throw-in' he was not seen again of the hunt that day, The first fence Molly negotiated in fine style, but at the second she came a terrible cropper that badly jolted Jack and knocked every last ounce of heart out of her, cowed her so completely that she'd be in that same meadow yet if there'd not been a pair of bars to lead her through, and divil a man was ever found could make her try another jump.

"Great was the quiet fun of Lory and Raven, though Lory's lasted little longer than Jack's joy of his white mount. Of course Jack was too game to let on he knew he'd been done, but not too busy to sharpen a rowel for Lory.

"And the rankest wonder it was Lory niver saw it till Jack had him raked from flank to shoulder--just stood and took it without a blink, like a donkey takes a lash.

"Within a week of Molly's downfall Lory was out on me one day, when up rides Jack and says:

"'There's a splendid hunter in me stable I want ye to have, Lory. Got more than I can keep, and your stable must be a bit shy since you parted with the white mare. He's the bay seventeen-hander in the Irish lot. Stands me over a thousand, but you can have him at your own price; don't want the hardest, straightest rider of the hunt shy of fit meat and bone to carry him.'

"Belikes it was the blarney caught him, but anyway Lory buried his muzzle in Jack's pail till he could see nothin' but what Jack said it held, and took the bay at six hundred dollars just on a casual lookover.

"It was a good action, a grand jumpin' form, and rare pace the bay showed on a short try-out that afternoon, so much so I overheard Lory tellin' himself, when he was after dismounting just outside me box: 'Gad! but ain't old Jack easy money!'

"But when Lory and the bay showed up at the next day's meet, I noticed the bay's ears layin' back or workin' in a way to tell any but a blind one it was dirty mischief he was plannin'. Nor was he long playin' it.

For about a third of the run the bay raced like a steeplechaser tight on the heels of the hounds, leadin' even the master, for Lory could no more hold him than his own glee at the grand way they were takin' gates and walls. But suddenly that bay divil's-sp.a.w.n swerves from the course, dashes up and stops bang broadside against a barn; and there, with ears laid back tight to his head and muzzle half upturned, for four mortal hours the bay held Lory's off leg jammed so tight against the barn that, rowel and crop-cut hard as he might, the only thing Lory was able to free was such a flow of language, it was a holy wonder Providence didn't fire the barn and burn up the pair of them.

"And as Jack pa.s.sed them I heard the divil sing not [Transcriber's note: out?]: 'Ha! Ha! Lory! it was the gray mare wanted to jump but couldn't, and it's the bay can jump but won't! It's an "oh h.e.l.l!" for you and a "ha! ha!" for me this time!'

"Which, while they're still fast friends, was the last word ever pa.s.sed between them on the subject of the funker and the balker."

CHAPTER XII

EL TIGRE

"A cat may look at a king, but the son of a village lawyer may not venture to bare his heart to the daughter of the Duque de la Torrevieja.

And yet a man of our blood was enn.o.bled early in the wars with the Moors, while the Duke's forebears were still simple men-at-arms, knighted under a name that in itself carries the ring of the heroic deeds that earned it."

The speaker, Mauro de la Lucha-sangre (literally "Mauro of the b.l.o.o.d.y Battle"), stood one June morning of 1874 beneath the shade of a gnarled olive-tree on the banks of the Guadaira River, rebelliously stamping a heel into the soft turf. Son of the foremost lawyer of his native town of Utrera, educated in Sevilla at the best university of his province, already at twenty-four himself a fully accredited _licenciado_, Mauro's future held actually brilliant prospects for a man of the station into which he was born. And yet, most envied of his cla.s.smates though he was, to Mauro himself the future loomed black, forbidding, cheerless.