ump an Apache. Comanches, now, an' Cheyenne an' Kiowa an'
Sioux ride out to storm at you--guns an' arrows all shootin'--wantin' to
count coup on a man by hittin' him personal. But th' 'Pache ain't wastin'
hisself that way. Nope--git behind a rock an' ambush ... put th' whole
hell-fired country t' work fur them. That's how th' 'Pache does his
fightin'. An' th' spit-an'-polish officers what come from eastward--they's
got t' larn that. Only sometimes they ain't good at larnin', an' then they
gits larned--good an' proper. Hey, Kells!"

They were at the stable and Fenner lifted a hand, palm out, in greeting to
the liveryman. "Here's Ole Tar wantin' his special grub--"

Drew went on to Shiloh's stall. Reese Topham, the Spaniard _Don_ Lorenzo
who had been in the cantina last night, the stout Mexican Bartolome, and
_Don_ Cazar himself were all there before him.

"Here he is now." Reese Topham waved a hand at Drew. "This is Mister
Kirby, from Texas."

"You have a fine horse there, Kirby--the mare, too. Eastern stock, I would
judge, perhaps Kentucky breeding?" Rennie asked.

Drew was taut inside. To say the wrong thing, to admit the line of that
breeding, might be a bad slip. Yet he could only evade, not lie directly.

"Yes, Kentucky." He answered the first words his father had ever addressed
to him.

"And the line?"

To be too evasive would invite suspicion. However, the Gray Eagle get was
in more than one Kentucky stable.

"Eclipse...." Drew set back the pedigree several equine generations.
Shiloh tossed his head, looked over his shoulder at Drew, who entered the
stall and began quieting the stallion with hands drawn gently over the
back and up the arch of the neck.

"The mare also?" _Don_ Cazar continued.

"Yes." The Kentuckian's answer sounded curt in his own ears, but he could
not help it.

"This Eclipse, _amigo_," _Don_ Lorenzo turned to Rennie for
enlightenment--"he was a notable horse?"

"_Si_, of the Messenger line. But a gray of that breeding--" _Don_ Cazar's
forefinger ran nail point along his lower lip. "Ariel blood, perhaps?"

Drew busied himself adjusting Shiloh's hackamore. This was getting close.
Hunt Rennie had lived in Kentucky over a year once. He had visited Red
Springs many times before he had dared to court Alexander Mattock's
daughter and been forbidden the place. His visits to the stable must have
familiarized him with the Gray Eagle-Ariel strain bred there. On the other
hand, horses of th