saddle, and accoutrements was so great that he had, at times, the
appearance of lifting Chu Chu forcibly from the ground by superior
strength, and of actually contributing to her exercise! As they came
towards me, a wild tossing and flying mass of hoofs and spurs, it was
not only difficult to distinguish them apart, but to ascertain how much
of the jumping was done by Enriquez separately. At last Chu Chu brought
matters to a close by making for the low-stretching branches of an
oak-tree which stood at the corner of the lot. In a few moments she
emerged from it--but without Enriquez.

I found the gallant fellow disengaging himself from the fork of a
branch in which he had been firmly wedged, but still smiling and
confident, and his cigarette between his teeth. Then for the first time
he removed it, and seating himself easily on the branch with his legs
dangling down, he blandly waved aside my anxious queries with a gentle
reassuring gesture.

"Remain tranquil, my friend. Thees does not count! I have conquer--you
observe--for why? I have _never_ for once _arrive at the ground_!
Consequent she is disappoint! She will ever that I _should_! But I
have got her when the hair is not long! Your oncle Henry"--with an
angelic wink--"is fly! He is ever a bully boy, with the eye of glass!
Believe me. Behold! I am here! Big Injun! Whoop!"

He leaped lightly to the ground. Chu Chu, standing watchfully at a
little distance, was evidently astonished at his appearance. She threw
out her hind hoofs violently, shot up into the air until the stirrups
crossed each other high above the saddle, and made for the stable in a
succession of rabbit-like bounds--taking the precaution to remove the
saddle, on entering, by striking it against the lintel of the door.
"You observe," said Enriquez blandly, "she would make that thing of
_me_. Not having the good occasion, she ees dissatisfied. Where
are you now?"

Two or three days afterwards he rode her again with the same
result--accepted by him with the same heroic complacency. As we did
not, for certain reasons, care to use the open road for this exercise
and as it was impossible to remove the tree, we were obliged to submit
to the inevitable. On the following day I mounted her--undergoing the
same experience as Enriquez, with the individual sensation of falling
from a third-story window on top of a counting-house stool, and the
variation of being projected over the fence. When I found that Chu