CHAPTER XVI
THE commandeering of the horses at the English ranch shocked Strawbridge; when the cavalcade set forth on the march again, the heat and glare of the llanos aggravated his mental disturbance. As he sweltered in the center of a vast shimmering horizon, he kept repeating mentally, at unexpected intervals, the epithet "horse-thieves." Each time these words bobbed up in his mind he put them down, rather like a man who is trying to keep some buoyant object under water, "horse-thieves . . . horse-thieves . . . horse-thieves . . ." over and over. His thinking did not progress much farther than that. "What made the buoyant object so difficult to control was the fact that he himself was riding one of Tolliver's horses. The very rhythm of the fine animal between his legs was a reminder and a reproach.
Sweat trickled into the drummer's eyes and stung them. He blinked through the quivering heat, with screwed-up lids, and wondered what he could have done about the horse. "When Coronel Saturnino insisted that he take one of the best of the English mounts, he could not have said, "No, I am a decent American salesman, and I won't ride a stolen horse." He could not have said such a thing as that in the face of the colonel's polite consideration.
On the other hand, the damning thought that he was riding a stolen horse gnawed at the drummer with the persistence of a rat. It gave him a faint, ghastly feeling in the pit of his stomach, where, perhaps, is located the genuine seat of conscience with us air.
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