AT AND THE PRETENDER

Not least among the things which the devil's imps ought to know from
watching the world is this: that hatred is always big when one is young.
Then, if the heart is bitter, it is bitter through and through. It is
terribly just, and terribly vindictive against the stranger who hurts us
with a cruel word, against our brother when we have misunderstood his
heart, against the traitor who owes us love because we loaned him love.
It is strange, too, how that hatred becomes a great force, pressing out
the empty places of the heart, and making the weak, strong, and the
simple, crafty.

El Mahdi ran with his jaws set on the bit, jumping high and striking the
earth with his legs half stiff, the meanest of all the mean whims of
this eccentric horse. On the level it was a hard enough gait; and on the
hill road none could have stood the intolerable jamming but one long
schooled in the ugly ways of the False Prophet. Along the skirts of the
saddle, running almost up to the horn, were round, quilted pads of
leather prepared against this dangerous habit. I rode with my knees
doubled and wedged in against the pads, catching the terrible jar where
there was bone and tendon and leather to meet and break it, and from
long custom I rode easily, unconscious of my extraordinary precautions
against the half-bucking jump.

The fence rushed past. The trees, as they always do, seemed to wait
until we were almost upon them, and then jump by. Still the horse was
not running fast. He wasted the value of his legs by jumping high in the
air like a goat, instead of running with his belly against the earth
like every other sensible horse whose business is to shorten distance.

He swept around the bare curves with the most reckless, headlong
plunges, and I caught the force of the great swing, now with the right,
and now with the left knee, throwing the whole weight of my body against
the horse's shoulder next to the hill. Once in a while the red nose of
the Cardinal showed by my stirrup and dropped back, but Jud was holding
his horse well and riding with his whole weight in the stirrups and the
strain on the back-webbed girth of his saddle where it ought to be. It
was a dangerous road if the horse fell, only El Mahdi never fell,
although he sometimes blundered like a cow; and the Cardinal never fell
when he ran, and the Bay Eagle, who knew all that a horse ever learned
in the world,--we would as soon have expected to see her fly