“You’re all right now,” said Lucy, soothingly.  Slowly she reached a hand toward his head.  He drew it back as far as he could.  She stepped around, closer, and more back of him, and put a hand on him, gently, for an instant.  Then she slipped out of the brush and, untying one lasso from the pommel, she returned to the horse and pulled it from round his legs.  He was free now, except the hackamore, and that rope was slack.  Lucy stood near him, watching him, talking to him, waiting for him to get up.  She could not be sure he was not badly hurt till he stood up.  At first he made no efforts to rise.  He watched Lucy, less fearfully, she imagined.  And she never made a move.  She wanted him to see, to understand that she had not hurt him and would not hurt him.  It began to dawn upon her that he was magnificent.

Finally, with a long, slow heave he got to his feet.  Lucy led him out of the hole to open ground.  She seemed somehow confident.  There occurred to her only one way to act.

“A little horse sense, as Dad would say,” she soliloquized, and then, when she got him out of the brush, she stood thrilled and amazed.

“Oh, what a wild, beautiful horse!  What a giant!  He’s bigger than the King.  Oh, if Dad could see him!”

The red stallion did not appear to be hurt.  The twitching of his muscles must have been caused by the cactus spikes embedded in him.  There were drops of blood all over one side.  Lucy thought she dared to try to pull these thorns out.  She had never in her life been afraid of any horse.  Farlane, Holley, all the riders, and her father, too, had tried to make her realize the danger in a horse, sooner or later.  But Lucy could not help it; she was not afraid; she believed that the meanest horse was actuated by natural fear of a man; she was not a man and she had never handled a horse like a man.  This red stallion showed hate of the black horse and the rope that connected them; he showed some spirit at the repeated blasts of Sage King.  But he showed less fear of her.

“He has been a proud, wild stallion,” mused Lucy.  “And he’s now broken—­terribly broken—­all but ruined.”

Then she walked up to him naturally and spoke softly, and reached a hand for his shoulder.

“Whoa, Reddy.  Whoa now. . . .  There.  That’s a good fellow.  Why, I wouldn’t rope you or hit you.  I’m only a girl.”

He drew up, made a single effort to jump, which she prevented, and then he stood quivering, eying her, while she talked soothingly, and patted him and looked at him in the way she had found infallible with most horses.  Lucy believed horses were like people, or easier to get along with.  Presently she gently pulled out one of the cactus spikes.  The horse flinched, but he stood.  Lucy was slow, careful, patient, and dexterous.  The cactus needles were loose and easily removed or brushed off.  At length she got him free of them, and was almost as proud as she was glad.  The horse had gradually dropped his head; he was tired and his spirit was broken.