Fulano’s Blood-Stain
“What a horse beyond all horses yours is!” said Biddulph to me next morning, as we rode along cheerily through the fresh, frosty air of December. “I think, when your continent gets to its finality in horse-flesh, you will beat our island.”
“Think what training such a trip is! This comrade of mine has come two thousand miles with me, — big thought, eh! — and he freshens up with the ozone of this morning, as if he had been in the stable a week, champing asphodel.”
Fulano felt my commendation. He became electrified. He stirred under me. I gave him rein. He shook himself out, and began to recite his accomplishments.
Whatever gait he had in his legs together, or portion of a leap in either pair of them; whatever gesticulations he considered graceful, with toes in the air before, or heels in the air behind; whatever serpentine writhe or sinewy bend of the body, whatever curve of the proud neck, fling of the head, signal of the ear, toss of the mane, whisk of the tail, he knew, — all these he repeated, to remind me what a horse he was, and justify my praise.
What a , indeed!
How far away from him every lubberly roadster, every hack that endures the holidays of a tailor, every grandpapa’s cob, every sloucher in a sulky! Of other race and other heart was this steed, both gentle and proud. He was still able to be the better half of a knight-errant when a charger worth a kingdom must be had, — when Love needed his mighty alliance in the battle with Brutality. He was willing now, in piping times of peace, to dance along his way, a gay comrade to the same knight-errant, riding homeward a quiet gentleman, with armor doffed and unsuspecting further war.
What sport we had together that morning! We were drawing near the end of our journey. Not that that was to part us! No, he was to be my companion still. I had a vision of him in a paddock, with a fine young fellow, not unlike myself, patting his head, while an oldish fellow, not unlike myself, in fact very me with another quarter of a century on my head, told the story of the Gallop of Three and the wild charge down Luggernel Alley to that unwearying auditor, while a lady, very like my ideal of a wife, stood by and thrilled again to the tale. Such a vision I had of Fulano’s future.
But now that our journey was ending, he and I were willing, on this exhilarating winter’s day, to talk it over. What had he gained by the chances by flood and field we had encountered together?
“I have not gone,” Fulano notified me, “two thousand miles, since my lonely, riderless days among the herds of Gerrian, since our first meeting on the prairie and my leap through the loop of José’s lasso, — I have not gone my leagues of continent for nothing.
“See what lessons I have learnt, thanks to you, my schoolmaster! This is my light step for heavy sand; this is my cautious step over pebbles; my high step over boulders; my easy, unwasteful travelling gait; my sudden stop without unseating my rider; so I swerve without shying; and so I spring into top speed without a strain. Your lady-love could canter me; your baby could walk me; because I please to be your friend, my friend. But you know me; I am the untamable still, except by love.”
And then he rehearsed the gaits he had studied from the creatures on the plains.
“Look, upper half of the Centaur,” he said, in the Centaur language; “see how an antelope goes!”
He doubled his legs under him and went off in high, jerky leaps, twice his length every one.
“Look! A buffalo!”
He lumbered along, shoulders low, head handled like a battering-ram, and tail stiff out like a steering-oar.
“Here’s a gray wolf.”
And he shambled forward in a loose-jointed canter, looking back furtively, like a thief, sorry he didn’t stop to steal the other goose, but expecting Stop thief! every minute.
“And so go I, Don Fulano, the Indomitable, a chieftain of the chiefest race below the man, — so go I when walk, pace, gallop, run, leap, career, tread space and time out of being, to show the other half of the Centaurship what my half can do for the love of his.”
“Magnificent!” applauded Biddulph at this display.
“His coquetries are as beautiful as a woman’s,” said Brent. “One whose sweet wiles are nature, not artifice.”
And I — but lately trained to believe that a woman may have the myriad charm of coy withdrawal, and yet not be the traitress youth learns from ancient cynics to fear — accepted the comparison.
Ah, peerless Fulano! that was our last love-passage!