He quietly raised his
forehead from his arm and looked between the masking stems of the
laurels, instinctively closing his right hand about the stock of his
rifle.
His first feeling was a keen artistic delight. On a colossal pedestal,
the cliff, - motionless at the extreme edge of the capping rock and
sharply outlined against the sky, - was an equestrian statue of
impressive dignity. The figure of the man sat the figure of the horse,
straight and soldierly, but with the repose of a Grecian god carted in
the marble which limits the suggestion of activity. The gray costume
harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and
caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had
no points of high light. A carbine, strikingly foreshortened, lay across
the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at
the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In
silhouette against the sky, the profile of the horse was cut with the
sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the
confronting cliffs beyond.
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