Sometimes they would come down out of the wooded hills to cross over plains – probably old pastures that had grown up into vast thickets. Jack would put Eliza up into the saddle so that thorns, nettles, and bugs wouldn't make a mess of her – not that he cared – but her chief reason for existence was to give him something pleasant to look at. Sometimes he'd put the Damascus blade to the ignoble purpose of hacking through brush. 'What do you and Turk see?' he'd say, because all he could see was useless vegetation, gone all brown in preparation for winter.