Juan was restless, and made as though to go forth to meet the advancing line.
"_Vamos--me vamos_!" he said, struggling to get past Curly, who pushed him back.
"Set down, d----n you--set down!" said Curly, and with his strange, childlike obedience, the great creature sat down and remained for a moment submissively silent.
The indefinite dust line turned from gray to dark, and soon began to show colours--black, red, roan, piebald--as the ponies came on with what seemed an effect of a tossing sea of waving manes and tails, blending and composing with the deep sweeping feather trails of the grand war bonnets.

Hands rose and fell with whips, and digging heels kept up the unison.

Above the rushing of the hoofs there came forward now and then a keen ululation.

Red-brown bodies, leaning, working up and down, rising and falling with the motion of the ponies, came into view, dozens of them--scores of them.

Their moccasined feet were turned back under the horses' bellies, the sinewy legs clamping the horse from thigh to ankle as the wild riders came on, with no bridle governing their steeds other than the jaw rope's single strand.
"Good cavalry, b'gad!" said Battersleigh calmly, as he watched them in their perfect horsemanship.