It was one o’clock, and yet he had only gained Rattlesnake Hill.  For in that time Jovita had rehearsed to him all her imperfections and practised all her vices.  Thrice had she stumbled.  Twice had she thrown up her Roman nose in a straight line with the reins, and, resisting bit and spur, struck out madly across country.  Twice had she reared, and, rearing, fallen backward; and twice had the agile Dick, unharmed, regained his seat before she found her vicious legs again.  And a mile beyond them, at the foot of a long hill, was Rattlesnake Creek.  Dick knew that here was the crucial test of his ability to perform his enterprise, set his teeth grimly, put his knees well into her flanks, and changed his defensive tactics to brisk aggression.  Bullied and maddened, Jovita began the descent of the hill.  Here the artful Richard pretended to hold her in with ostentatious objurgation and well-feigned cries of alarm.  It is unnecessary to add that Jovita instantly ran away.  Nor need I state the time made in the descent; it is written in the chronicles of Simpson’s Bar.  Enough that in another moment, as it seemed to Dick, she was splashing on the overflowed banks of Rattlesnake Creek.  As Dick expected, the momentum she had acquired carried her beyond the point of balking, and, holding her well together for a mighty leap, they dashed into the middle of the swiftly flowing current.  A few moments of kicking, wading, and swimming, and Dick drew a long breath on the opposite bank.

The road from Rattlesnake Creek to Red Mountain was tolerably level.  Either the plunge in Rattlesnake Creek had dampened her baleful fire, or the art which led to it had shown her the superior wickedness of her rider, for Jovita no longer wasted her surplus energy in wanton conceits.  Once she bucked, but it was from force of habit; once she shied, but it was from a new freshly painted meeting-house at the crossing of the county road.  Hollows, ditches, gravelly deposits, patches of freshly springing grasses, flew from beneath her rattling hoofs.  She began to smell unpleasantly, once or twice she coughed slightly, but there was no abatement of her strength or speed.  By two o’clock he had passed Red Mountain and begun the descent to the plain.  Ten minutes later the driver of the fast Pioneer coach was overtaken and passed by a “man on a Pinto hoss,”—­an event sufficiently notable for remark.  At half past two Dick rose in his stirrups with a great shout.  Stars were glittering through the rifted clouds, and beyond him, out of the plain, rose two spires, a flagstaff, and a straggling line of black objects.  Dick jingled his spurs and swung his riata, Jovita bounded forward, and in another moment they swept into Tuttleville and drew up before the wooden piazza of “The Hotel of All Nations.”