A Horse Called Mogollon (Floating Outfit Book 3) (7 page)

Forming a wide, crescent-shaped
line, Dusty, Colin and the Kid followed the departing
manada.
Each of them kept up
his whooping, to urge the mustangs onwards and alert the other
members of their party that the
corrida
had begun. Striding out at speed, none of
the stallions showed signs of separating from the remainder of the
band. The black
manadero
brought up the rear, snaking its neck around occasionally
to look at the pursuing men.

On reaching the edge of the valley,
the horses plunged unhesitatingly down its gentle side. Laying flat
along the neck of her quivering, impatient brown gelding, so as to
remain hidden amongst a clump of mesquite, Jeanie watched them.
When the leaders started across the level ground, she sent the
horse bounding from cover.

‘
Cam
na cuimhne!’
the girl shrieked, giving the rallying call of the Clan
Farquharson, ‘Cairn of Remembrance’, in honor of her fiancé, once
more producing a satisfactory start to a
corrida.

Gripping a
saddle blanket in her left hand,
Jeanie waved
and
flapped it over her head. The girl’s sudden and noisy
appearance caused the leading stallions to swerve hurriedly in the
required direction along the valley. Some of the following horses
showed signs of breaking away and heading up the opposite slope.
Placed there to circumvent such tactics, a
mestenero
called Bernardo appeared on the rim
and rode in the deserters’ direction. Turning back, the would-be
bunch-quitters rejoined the
manada
to obtain mutual protection from its
numbers.

Hooves rumbled and drummed in a
growing crescendo, punctuated by the wild yells of the riders.
Turned along the valley in the direction of the fatal draw,
the
manada
was kept on the move by the girl and her companions. While
the Kid rode parallel to the rim down which the mustangs had
entered the valley, Bernardo remained on the other ridge. Dusty and
Colin joined Jeanie on the bottom, urging their horses onwards in
an attempt to keep pace with the girl. Being smaller and lighter,
Jeanie had the advantage over both of them. Knowing the dangers
involved in making a
corrida
on a
manada de hermanos,
the girl tried to restrain the brown
gelding’s eagerness. Despite all her efforts, she drew ahead as the
chase continued. Nor could Colin stay level with Dusty, and the
three riders formed an angular line across the valley.

Almost half a mile fell behind
the pursued and the pursuers. Underfoot, the springy grama grass
grew in such profusion that it prevented the dust from rising
beneath the pounding hooves. Still in the lead of the trio, Jeanie
regarded that as a mixed blessing. While it allowed her an almost
unrestricted view of what lay ahead, the same also applied to the
members of the
manada.
Holding her gelding to its racing gait, Jeanie could see
the mouth of the draw which held the
caracol.
Beyond the opening, the yard-wide furrow
dug by the
mesteneros
stretched across the valley and up the opposite
slope.

Jeanie knew that the new few
seconds would be of vital importance. The result of the
corrida
depended on what
happened during them. While wild horses for some reason fought shy
of crossing a naked strip of earth like the furrow, the response of
a
manada de
hermanos
to
such a sight was far less predictable than that of a
mestena.
When they reached
the furrow, the stallions might decided to scatter instead of
turning as a band. If so, they would burst apart like an exploding
canister shell spraying out its load of cast-iron balls. Then the
whole band might be lost, or only a fraction of it fall into
the
mesteneros’
hands.

At the sight of the furrow, the
leading stallions of the
manada
started to swing aside—but not towards the
entrance of the trap. Positioned to counter such an eventuality,
Jeanie’s segundo, Felix Machado and another
mestenero
made a sudden and rowdy
appearance on top of the slope up which the stallions were heading.
Yelling and waving blankets, they charged towards the
manada.

Watching the whooping,
hard-riding pair approach the stallions, Jeanie caught her breath
in anxiety. Knowing what must be done, she directed her fast-moving
mount towards the edge of the incline down which Felix and Carlos
were making their reckless descent. Equally aware of the danger,
Dusty continued to hold his
bayo-cebrunos
in the center of the valley and about thirty feet
to the girl’s rear. Approximately the same distance behind Dusty,
Colin steered his
bayo-lobo
along the foot of the other slope. Confronted by Felix and
Carlos, the stallions skidded into rump-scraping, hoof-churning
turns. At that moment, everything swung on a very delicate
balance.

‘
Yeeah!’ Dusty bellowed, giving the start of the battle cry
which with its accompaniment of ‘Texas Light!’ had been so well
known and hated by the Yankee soldiers in Arkansas.

‘
Cam
na cuimhne!’
Jeanie screeched, voice hoarse and cracked from its earlier
efforts.

‘
Cam
na cuimhne!’
echoed
Colin, the wild excitement of the chase stirring his
Highland blood and adding a ringing turbulence to his utterance of
the clan’s slogan.

Approached on two sides by the
yelling, hated man-creatures, faced by that
mysterious
—therefore dangerous and to be avoided—strip of bare ground
on the third, the
manada
was left with only one way to go. Wild-eyed, tails
streaming in the breeze, the stallions still retained sufficient of
their herding instincts to hold together as they plunged towards
the ‘safety’ offered by the mouth of the draw.

Only the old
manadero
saw the danger. Swinging away
just before it reached the entrance, the big stallion gave a
spine-chilling scream and charged at the nearest of its pursuers.
Head thrust forward to the full extent of its outstretched neck,
eyes rolling, ears laid flat back and mouth open to display
worn-down, age-yellowed teeth, mane bristling furiously and tail
spiked straight to the rear, it made a frightening
picture.

Certainly
Dusty
’s
bayo-cebrunos
gelding thought so, for it had been the animal
selected by the black
manadero
to be attacked. While it was now a trained
cow-horse, the
bayo-cebrunos
had begun its life in a wild
mestena.
During its formative years, it
had experienced the domination of a master-stallion. No other
creature, except possibly man, exercised such a complete despotic
rule over its offspring. So the
bayo-cebrunos,
which would face the charge of a
hostile longhorn bull without flinching, showed the greatest
reluctance to going up against the
manadero.

Throwing back its head, the little
horse attempted to come to a stop and turn away all in one motion.
Dusty felt its feet slipping from under it as it lost its balance.
If he had been afork his own saddle, the small Texan might have
averted the trouble. The ultra-light rig, combined with the
noseband bosal instead of a bit did not allow him to exert the
necessary control with his hands or legs.

Feeling the
bayo-cebrunos
going down and
knowing that he could not prevent it, Dusty snatched his right boot
from the brass stirrup ‘iron’. The horse was falling that way and
he had no desire to be trapped beneath it. Swinging his leg forward
and over the gelding’s neck, he kept his other foot in the stirrup
to give him support. When the time came to remove it, he felt his
boot cling in the grasp of the brass semi-circle.

A sudden jerk ripped
Dusty
’s foot
free, but his equilibrium had been destroyed. Instead of landing
running as he had planned, he stumbled and went down. Long
experience at riding bucking horses had taught him how to fall,
even unexpectedly, with the minimum of pain or chance of injuring
himself. Ducking his head forward and twisting his torso, he landed
on his left shoulder with his body curled into a ball. Rolling over
and over on the grama grass, he knew that he was still far from out
of danger.

Shattering the air with its
fighting screams, the raging
manadero
charged at the
bayo-cebrunos
and ignored Dusty. It almost seemed
that the stallion intended to inflict punishment on the fallen
horse for its betrayal of their species to the hated human beings.
Rearing high on its hind legs, the black flailed its fore feet
ready to smash down its hooves upon the helpless little gelding’s
body.

Knowing that there was only one
way to deal with a kill-crazy
manadero,
Dusty prepared to do it—if he could. Ending his
roll flat on his back, he sent his left hand flashing across to
close on and draw the right side Colt. Even as the revolver’s
seven-and-a-half inch barrel cleared leather, with his forefinger
entering the trigger-guard and thumb easing back the hammer to full
cock, he doubted if it possessed the power to halt the stallion in
time to save his mount.

The 1
860 Army Colt’s twenty-five grain
powder charge and .44 caliber, 212-grain bullet might be effective
man-stoppers, but they lacked the energy to fell the horse
instantly unless striking a vital spot. Under the circumstances,
Dusty lacked the time needed to take a careful aim and ensure he
hit such a spot. To merely wound the
manadero
could easily bring its attention and rage
on to him, but he had to take that chance. Flat on his back, lining
his Colt above his raised knees, he squeezed the trigger and
directed his bullet at the
manadero’s
ribs. Being hit there might turn the stallion and
allow the struggling
bayo-cebrunos
to regain its feet and escape.

Although Dusty did not know it,
help was already coming. Seeing the small Texan
’s perilous predicament, Colin
acted with speed, decision and purpose. Twisting his right hand
palm outwards, he swept the big old Dragoon from its holster. Back
reared the hammer beneath his thumb and he thrust the sixty-five
ounce revolver to arm’s length. Looking along its round barrel
almost as if sighting a shotgun, the Scot tightened his forefinger
on the trigger.

Two seconds after
Colin
’s hand
had closed on the ivory butt, flame spurted from a percussion cap.
In the uppermost chamber of the cylinder, forty grains of best du
Pont powder turned into gases, which drove a conical .44, 219-grain
soft lead bullet along the barrel’s rifling grooves. Until
improvements in steel made possible the use of the mighty .44
Magnum cartridge, no handgun would exceed the power of the 1848
Colt Dragoon revolver when loaded to its maximum
capacity.

Hurling through the air at a
velocity of nine hundred feet-
per-second, Colin’s bullet struck the side of the
stallion’s throat an instant after Dusty’s lead found its rib cage.
Plowing through flesh and muscles, the Dragoon’s load broke
the
manadero’s
neck and crumpled it almost immediately to the
ground.

Seeing its assailant falling
towards it, the
bayo-cebrunos
screamed in terror. With legs waving wildly, it
rolled on to its back. Keeping turning, it avoided being struck by
the stallion’s collapsing body. Then it lurched to its feet and
went plunging off in the direction from which it had
come.

‘
Catch
my saddle!’ Dusty yelled, sitting up and making the usual request
given by a man who had been thrown and saw his horse
bolting.
^xiii

‘
No
time the now, laddie,’ Colin replied, holstering his Dragoon and
grinning at the small Texan as his
bayo-lobo
carried him by. ‘There’s work to be
done—and money to be earned.’

‘
Blasted foreigner!’ Dusty bellowed in simulated anger after
the Scot’s departing back. ‘I always heard you jaspers from
Scotland were mean.’

As Dusty and Colin knew, the
loss of the gelding would only be temporary. In fact the long,
split-ended reins trailing about its fore legs had already begun to
slow its flight. Trained to stand still when the reins dangled
free, a precaution against the rider having to dismount and leave
the horse in a location which offered no means of tying it up,
the
bayo-cebrunos
did not go far before it came to a halt. Snorting
and tossing its head, it made no further attempt to run
away.

After watching his companions
follow the remainder of the
manada
into the draw, Dusty walked towards his horse. He
caught it without difficulty and, after calming it down, examined
it. Finding it lathered, shivering a little, but otherwise
unharmed, he took its reins and led it along the valley to rejoin
the rest of the mustanging party.