Читать книгу Nameless River онлайн

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As the blue horse sidled expertly down the slope a loose stone turned under his shod hoof, causing him to stumble ever so slightly, though he caught himself instantly.

As instantly the woman’s spurred heel struck his flank, her swift tightening of the rein anticipated his resultant start.

“Pick up your feet, you!” she said sharply, frowning.

The stallion did pick up his feet, for he was intelligent, but he shook his proud head, laid his ears back on his neck, and the sweat started on his sensitive skin at the needless rake of the spur. The great dark eyes in his grey-blue face shone for a time like fox-fire in the dark, twin sparks beneath the light of his tossing silver forelock.

He choose his footing more carefully, though he was an artist in hill climbing at all times, for the woman on his back was a hard task-master. Caught as a colt in the high meadows of the Upper Country beyond the Deep Heart hills, the horse had served her faithfully for four of his seven years of life, and hated her sullenly. There was mixed blood in his veins—wild, from the slim white mother who had never felt a rope, patrician, gentle, tractable, from the thoroughbred black father lost from a horse-trader’s string eleven years back and sought for many bootless moons because of his great value.