"Hi, Harry. Say, what's your watch schedule now?" "I've got four hours off, back on for four, then sixteen off. Why?" "Well, a few of us are getting up a friendly little game before we go back on watch. I thought you might want to join us." "Well, I--" "Come on, now. What's your excuse this time for not playing cards?" "To start with, I'm scheduled for a half hour in the simulator, and another half hour in the procedural trainer. Then if I finish the exam in my correspondence course, I can get it on this week's mail plane. If I don't get it in the mail now, I'll have to wait until next week." "All right, I'll let you off this time. How's the course coming?" "This is the final exam. If I pass, I'll have only forty-two more credits to go before I have my degree in Animal Husbandry." "What on earth do you want with a degree like that?" "I keep telling you. When I retire, I'm going back to Oklahoma and raise horses. If I got into all the card games you try to organize, I'd retire with neither the knowledge to run a horse ranch, nor the money to start one." "But why raise horses? Cabbages, I can see. Tomatoes, yes. But why horses?" "Partly because there's always a market for them, so I'll have a fair amount of business to keep me eating regularly. But mostly because I like horses. I practically grew up in the saddle. By the time I was old enough to do much riding, Dad had his own ranch, and I helped earn my keep by working for him. Under those circumstances, I just naturally learned to like horses." "Guess I never thought of it like that. I was a city boy myself. The only horses I ever saw were the ones the cops rode. I didn't get much chance to became familiar with the beasts." * * * * * "Well, you don't know what you missed. It's just impossible to describe what it's like to use a high-spirited and well-trained horse in your daily work. The horse almost gets to sense what you want him to do next. You don't have to direct his every move. Just a word or two, and a touch with your heel or the pressure of your knee against his side, and he's got the idea. A well-trained horse is perfectly capable of cutting a particular cow out of a herd without any instructions beyond showing him which one you want." "It's too bad the Army did away with the cavalry. Sounds like you belong there, not in the Air Force." "No, because if there's anything I like better than riding a good horse, it's flying a fast and responsive airplane. I've been flying fighters for almost seventeen years now, and I'll be quite happy to keep flying them as long as they'll let me. When I can't fly fighters any more, then I'll go back to horses. And much as I like horses, I hope that's going to be a long time yet." "You must hate this assignment, then. How come I never hear you complain about it?"