Little Lady of the Big House | Page 4

moment, with an irritated indrawing of brows, then
swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button that made
the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a pause for

word or idea:
"In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that
you were hit with hog cholera. I am equally sorry that you have seen fit
to charge me with the responsibility. And just as equally am I sorry that
the boar we sent you is dead.
"I can only assure you that we are quite clear of cholera here, and that
we have been clear of cholera for eight years, with the exception of two
Eastern importations, the last two years ago, both of which, according
to our custom, were segregated on arrival and were destroyed before
the contagion could be communicated to our herds.
"I feel that I must inform you that in neither case did I charge the
sellers with having sent me diseased stock. On the contrary, as you
should know, the incubation of hog cholera being nine days, I
consulted the shipping dates of the animals and knew that they had
been healthy when shipped.
"Has it ever entered your mind that the railroads are largely responsible
for the spread of cholera? Did you ever hear of a railroad fumigating or
disinfecting a car which had carried cholera? Consult the dates: First, of
shipment by me; second, of receipt of the boar by you; and, third, of
appearance of symptoms in the boar. As you say, because of washouts,
the boar was five days on the way. Not until the seventh day after you
receipted for same did the first symptoms appear. That makes twelve
days after it left my hands.
"No; I must disagree with you. I am not responsible for the disaster that
overtook your herd. Furthermore, doubly to assure you, write to the
State Veterinary as to whether or not my place is free of cholera.
"Very truly yours..."
CHAPTER II

When Forrest went through the French windows from his
sleeping-porch, he crossed, first, a comfortable dressing room,
window-divaned, many- lockered, with a generous fireplace, out of
which opened a bathroom; and, second, a long office room, wherein
was all the paraphernalia of business--desks, dictaphones, filing
cabinets, book cases, magazine files, and drawer-pigeonholes that
tiered to the low, beamed ceiling.
Midway in the office room, he pressed a button and a series of book-
freightened shelves swung on a pivot, revealing a tiny spiral stairway of
steel, which he descended with care that his spurs might not catch, the
bookshelves swinging into place behind him.
At the foot of the stairway, a press on another button pivoted more
shelves of books and gave him entrance into a long low room shelved
with books from floor to ceiling. He went directly to a case, directly to
a shelf, and unerringly laid his hand on the book he sought. A minute
he ran the pages, found the passage he was after, nodded his head to
himself in vindication, and replaced the book.
A door gave way to a pergola of square concrete columns spanned with
redwood logs and interlaced with smaller trunks of redwood, all rough
and crinkled velvet with the ruddy purple of the bark.
It was evident, since he had to skirt several hundred feet of concrete
walls of wandering house, that he had not taken the short way out.
Under wide-spreading ancient oaks, where the long hitching-rails,
bark-chewed, and the hoof-beaten gravel showed the stamping place of
many horses, he found a pale-golden, almost tan-golden, sorrel mare.
Her well-groomed spring coat was alive and flaming in the morning
sun that slanted straight under the edge of the roof of trees. She was
herself alive and flaming. She was built like a stallion, and down her
backbone ran a narrow dark strip of hair that advertised an ancestry of
many range mustangs.
"How's the Man-Eater this morning?" he queried, as he unsnapped the
tie-rope from her throat.

She laid back the tiniest ears that ever a horse possessed--ears that told
of some thoroughbred's wild loves with wild mares among the
hills--and snapped at Forrest with wicked teeth and wicked-gleaming
eyes.
She sidled and attempted to rear as he swung into the saddle, and,
sidling and attempting to rear, she went off down the graveled road.
And rear she would have, had it not been for the martingale that held
her head down and that, as well, saved the rider's nose from her
angry-tossing head.
So used was he to the mare, that he was scarcely aware of her antics.
Automatically, with slightest touch of rein against arched neck, or with
tickle of spur or press of knee, he kept the mare to the way he willed.
Once,