Young Travers, who had been engaged to a girl down on Long Island for
the last three months, only met her father and brother a few weeks
before the day set for the wedding. The brother is a master of hounds
near Southampton, and shared the expense of importing a pack from
England with Van Bibber. The father and son talked horse all day and
until one in the morning; for they owned fast thoroughbreds, and
entered them at the Sheepshead Bay and other race-tracks. Old Mr.
Paddock, the father of the girl to whom Travers was engaged, had often
said that when a young man asked him for his daughter's hand he would
ask him in return, not if he had lived straight, but if he could ride
straight. And on his answering this question in the affirmative
depended his gaining her parent's consent. Travers had met Miss
Paddock and her mother in Europe, while the men of the family were at
home. He was invited to their place in the fall when the hunting
season opened, and spent the evening most pleasantly and
satisfactorily with his _fiancée_ in a corner of the drawing-room.
But as soon as the women had gone, young Paddock joined him and said,
"You ride, of course?" Travers had never ridden; but he had been
prompted how to answer by Miss Paddock, and so said there was nothing
he liked better. As he expressed it, he would rather ride than sleep.
"That's good," said Paddock. "I'll give you a mount on Satan to-morrow
morning at the meet. He is a bit nasty at the start of the season; and
ever since he killed Wallis, the second groom, last year, none of us
care much to ride him. But you can manage him, no doubt. He'll just
carry your weight."
Mr. Travers dreamed that night of taking large, desperate leaps into
space on a wild horse that snorted forth flames, and that rose at
solid stone walls as though they were hayricks.
He was tempted to say he was ill in the morning--which was,
considering his state of mind, more or less true--but concluded that,
as he would have to ride sooner or later during his visit, and that if
he did break his neck it would be in a good cause, he determined to do
his best. He did not want to ride at all, for two excellent
reasons--first, because he wanted to live for Miss Paddock's sake,
and, second, because he wanted to live for his own.
The next morning was a most forbidding and doleful-looking morning,
and young Travers had great hopes that the meet would be declared off;
but, just as he lay in doubt, the servant knocked at his door with
his riding things and his hot water.
He came down-stairs looking very miserable indeed. Satan had been
taken to the place where they were to meet, and Travers viewed him on
his arrival there with a sickening sense of fear as he saw him pulling
three grooms off their feet.
Travers decided that he would stay with his feet on solid earth just
as long as he could, and when the hounds were thrown off and the rest
had started at a gallop he waited, under the pretence of adjusting his
gaiters, until they were all well away. Then he clenched his teeth,
crammed his hat down over his ears, and scrambled up on to the saddle.
His feet fell quite by accident into the stirrups, and the next
instant he was off after the others, with an indistinct feeling that
he was on a locomotive that was jumping the ties. Satan was in among
and had passed the other horses in less than five minutes, and was so
close on the hounds that the whippers-in gave a cry of warning. But
Travers could as soon have pulled a boat back from going over the
Niagara Falls as Satan, and it was only because the hounds were well
ahead that saved them from having Satan ride them down. Travers had
taken hold of the saddle with his left hand to keep himself down, and
sawed and swayed on the reins with his right. He shut his eyes
whenever Satan jumped, and never knew how he happened to stick on; but
he did stick on, and was so far ahead that no one could see in the
misty morning just how badly he rode. As it was, for daring and speed
he led the field, and not even young Paddock was near him from the
start. There was a broad stream in front of him, and a hill just on
its other side. No one had ever tried to take this at a jump. It was
considered more of a swim than anything else, and the hunters always
crossed it by the bridge, towards the left. Travers saw the bridge and
tried to jerk Satan's head in that direction; but Satan kept right on
as straight as an express train over the prairie. Fences and trees and
furrows passed by and under Travers like a panorama run by
electricity, and he only breathed by accident. They went on at the
stream and the hill beyond as though they were riding at a stretch of
turf, and, though the whole field set up a shout of warning and
dismay, Travers could only gasp and shut his eyes. He remembered the
fate of the second groom and shivered. Then the horse rose like a
rocket, lifting Travers so high in the air that he thought Satan would
never come down again; but he did come down, with his feet bunched, on
the opposite side of the stream. The next instant he was up and over
the hill, and had stopped panting in the very centre of the pack that
were snarling and snapping around the fox. And then Travers showed
that he was a thoroughbred, even though he could not ride, for he
hastily fumbled for his cigar-case, and when the field came pounding
up over the bridge and around the hill, they saw him seated
nonchalantly on his saddle, puffing critically at a cigar and giving
Satan patronizing pats on the head.
"My dear girl," said old Mr. Paddock to his daughter as they rode
back, "if you love that young man of yours and want to keep him, make
him promise to give up riding. A more reckless and more brilliant
horseman I have never seen. He took that double jump at the gate and
that stream like a centaur. But he will break his neck sooner or
later, and he ought to be stopped." Young Paddock was so delighted
with his prospective brother-in-law's great riding that that night in
the smoking-room he made him a present of Satan before all the men.
"No," said Travers, gloomily, "I can't take him. Your sister has asked
me to give up what is dearer to me than anything next to herself, and
that is my riding. You see, she is absurdly anxious for my safety, and
she has asked me to promise never to ride again, and I have given my
word."
A chorus of sympathetic remonstrance rose from the men.
"Yes, I know," said Travers to her brother, "it is rough, but it just
shows what sacrifices a man will make for the woman he loves."