Did you never see
how beautiful and modest the faces of deer are; how chic and sensitive is
the manner of a hound; nor the keen, warm look in the eye of a well-bred
mare? Why, I'd rather be a good horse of blood and temper than half the
fellows I know. You are not an animal lover as I am; yes, even when I
shoot them or fight them I admire them, just as I'd admire a swordsman
who, in 'quart,' would give me death by the wonderful upper thrust. It's
all a battle; all a game of love and slaughter, my son, and both go
together.
"Well, as I say, her face followed me. Watch how the thing developed.
By the prairie-track I went over to Fort Desire, near the Rockies, almost
immediately after this, to see about buying a ranch with my old chum at
Trinity, Polly Cliffshawe--Polydore, you know. Whom should I meet in a
hut on the ranch but Jacques's friend, Pretty Pierre. This was luck; but
he was not like Jacques Pontiac, he was secretive as a Buddhist deity.
He had a good many of the characteristics that go to a fashionable
diplomatist: clever, wicked, cool, and in speech doing the vanishing
trick just when you wanted him.
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