Chapter XX

Fidelity

Meantime Pat was running at top speed
across the desert. Yet he was trying to
understand this strange call to duty. Roused
from fitful slumber by trampling hoofs, he had felt
an excited hand jerking him to his feet, and after
that a slender rope looped round his lower jaw.
Then he had been urged, with a wriggling form
onhis bare back, frantic heels drumming his sides,
and a strange voice impelling him onward past a
surging crowd of horsemen, still only half awake,
out into the open. When he was well in the fore,
he had found himself crowded to his utmost--
over sand-dune, into arroyo, across the level--
around him thundering hoofs, panting horses,
silent men, all speeding forward in the glorious
moonlight. It was a strange awakening, yet he
had not entertained thoughts of rebellion, despite
the fact that he had not liked the flaying rope,
the soft digging heels, the absence of bridle and
saddle. It was strange; it was not right. None
of it had checked up with any item of his
experience. Yet, oddly enough, he had not rebelled.
Nor was he harboring thoughts of rebellion now.

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