With his long, black mane and tail rippling and waving in the breeze that swept down from Blair Pass and across the Basin, with his raven-black coat glistening in the sunlight with the sheen of richest satin where the swelling muscles curved and rounded from shadow to high light, and with his poise of perfect strength and freedom, he looked, as indeed he was, a prince of his kind--a lord of the untamed life that homes in those God-cultivated fields.
Patches glanced at his companion, as if to speak, but struck by the expression on the cowboy's face, remained silent.

Phil was leaning a little forward in his saddle, his body as perfect in its poise of alert and graceful strength as the body of the wild horse at which he was gazing with such fixed interest.

The clear, deeply tanned skin of his cheeks glowed warmly with the red of his clean, rich blood, his eyes shone with suppressed excitement, his lips, slightly parted, curved in a smile of appreciation, love and reverence for the unspoiled beauty of the wild creature that he himself, in so many ways, unconsciously resembled.
And Patches--bred and schooled in a world so far from this world of primitive things--looking from Phil to the wild horse, and back again from the stallion to the man, felt the spirit and the power that made them kin--felt it with a, to him, strange new feeling of reverence, as though in the perfect, unspoiled life-strength of man and horse he came in closer touch with the divine than he had ever known before.
Then, without taking his eyes from the object of his almost worship, Phil said, "Now, watch him, Patches, watch him!" As he spoke, he moved slowly toward the band, while Patches rode close by his side.
At their movement, the wild stallion called another warning to his followers, and went a few graceful paces toward the slowly approaching men.

And then, as they continued their slow advance, he wheeled with the smooth grace of a swallow, and, with a movement so light and free that he seemed rather to skim over the surface of the ground than to tread upon it, circled here and there about his band, assembling them in closer order, flying, with ears flat and teeth bared and mane and tail tossing, in lordly fury at the laggards, driving them before him, but keeping always between his charges and the danger until they were at what he evidently judged to be, for their inferior strength, a distance of safety.

Then again he halted his company and, moving alone a short way toward the horsemen, stood motionless, watching their slow approach.
Again Phil checked his horse.