Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/194

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190
FREE RANGE LANNING


place, and he felt that he could sum up the differences between the two beautiful animals. Sally was the smaller of the two, for instance. She could not stand more than fifteen hands, or fifteen-one at the most. Gray Peter was a full sixteen hands of strong bone and fine muscle, a big animal—almost too big for some purposes. Among these rocks, now, he would stand no chance with Sally. Gray Peter was a picture horse. When one looked at him one felt that he was a standard by which other animals should be measured. He carried his head loftily, and there was a lordly flaunt to his tail. On the other hand, Sally was rather long and low. Her back, indeed, was comparatively short, as the back of a good saddle horse must be, but she had a long line underneath, so long that one felt at first glance that she would be apt to break down under a hard ride and a big burden. There was something subtly deceptive about her—she got that impression of length not so much out of her coupling as from the great slope and length of her shoulders and the length of the straight croup. Furthermore, her neck, which was by no means the heavy neck of the gray stallion, she was apt to carry stretched rather straight out and not curled proudly up as Gray Peter carried his. Neither did she bear her tail so proudly. Some of this, of course, was due to the difference between a mare and a stallion, but still more came from the differing natures of the two animals. In the head lay the greatest variation. The head of Gray Peter was close to perfection, light, compact, heavy of jowl, a great distance from the eye to the angle of the jaw, and well set upon his neck; his eye at all times was filled with an intolerable brightness, a keen flame of courage and eagerness. But one could find a fault with Sally's head. In general, it was very well shaped, with