Stolen Stallion (3 page)

T
HE LETTER WHICH CAME FOR
C
HARLIE
M
OORE TO THE
Richmond ranch was very crisp and brief. But Charlie read it over and over, sitting in the twilight on the steps of the house while the other cowpunchers sat around their poker game inside. It was near the end of the month, and they were gambling, therefore, in futurities.

Harry Richmond, noisily stalking through the room, more like a fat-bodied, long-legged crane than ever, plucked the paper out of the limp fingers of Moore and read:

When Harry Richmond had finished reading this document, he balled it in his hand and hurled it into the outer darkness.

“Sierra Blanca!” he groaned.

Charlie Moore nodded his head, and swallowed slowly. At last he said, “He’s gone. I’ll never see Brandy again!”

“If you took care of what you own,” shouted Richmond, “if you didn’t let sneakin’ half-breeds steal everything you’ve got, you might amount to somethin’, some day. Now Brandy’s gone. You’ve let him get away — and half of him was mine.”

“Aye,” said Charlie Moore, “half of him was yours. And half was mine. And he’s gone. I’d give up my half for the chance of seein’ him inside the corral once more, liftin’ his head when I talk to him, comin’ when I whistle. But he’s gone into the Sierra Blanca, and nobody’ll lay eyes on him again.”

A thought struck into the mind of Richmond, deeper than the sound of a bell.

“You’d give him up — your half of him?” asked Richmond.

“I’d give him up,” said Charlie Moore, “but that won’t bring him back here. I might as well just give up a wish as to give up a horse that’s runnin’ wild in the Sierra Blanca.”

“I dunno,” said Harry Richmond. The greatness of his desire and his hope raised a storm in his breast. His eyes burned. “Suppose that you and me and a bunch of others, with some fast horses, went up there and campaigned for Brandy. Suppose that we caught him — you’d give up your half?”

“Sure,” said Charlie Moore, “but there ain’t any hope.”

“There’s hope enough to make me try,” said the rancher. “Besides,” he added, “it would be the same as though he was part yours, anyway. You’d have the handlin’ of him!”

• • •

It was Mischief that smelled the scent of men and iron and gunpowder before any of the herd. She had been as wild as any of them during half her life, and the other half had familiarized her more profoundly with man and his ways. So her hair-trigger senses found the danger while it was still far off. Her neigh gathered the herd into swift flight that she led, while Brandy ranged at the rear, swinging back and forth, nipping at the old mares, at the ancient, blundering stallions, at the clumsy colts that made up the rear guard. So the herd was partly led and partly swept out of the dangerous narrowness of a valley, and as it ran, the wild horses saw riders streaming down the slope on their left.

On out of the ravine, exploding like a shell in the midst of rolling dust, the herd poured into the more open desert. Behind it the pursuit sagged down, and failed.

But that was only the beginning. For ten days the pursuit continued. Mysteriously, horsemen appeared at the water holes toward which the band headed. Deprived of water and with little time to graze, on account of constant alarms, the whole band lost flesh and strength and spirits — all except Mischief and the new leader. Her iron-hard constitution saved her, and in Brandy there was an unfailing fountain of strength; the greatness of his soul seemed able to supply the needs of his body. Even so, he was drawn fine indeed on that day when the herd had been led into a pleasant valley by Mischief, so that the older and the younger animals could find easier grazing. Here the grass grew almost thick, and two springs threw out rills which joined in a delightful stream before the thirst of the ground sucked up the running water. It was high time that the band should find rest and food; the older animals were beginning to stumble and the knees of the younger colts were continually a-tremble.

They had grazed for perhaps three hours, undisturbed, when the accurate nose of Mischief detected trouble in the offing; her neigh was a clarion that gathered the herd suddenly around her. Brandy joined her on the slight hummock from which she was sweeping the landscape.

“There’s no danger,” said Brandy, as he touched his nose to hers. “I haven’t your eyes, but there’s no danger. No horse and rider could manage to sneak up on us, here. Common sense will teach you that.”

“Trust a mare’s instinct rather than a stallion’s common sense,” said Mischief, flaring out her nostrils, and stamping suspiciously. “I found the scent of man in the air, and that means trouble.”

“A man on horseback — yes,” said Brandy.

“Horseback or afoot, it doesn’t matter a great deal,” said Mischief. “The smell puts the taste of iron back in my mouth, and I feel the rope burn again, and the halter flaps once more on my head. Don’t try to tell me, because I know.”

“You’re afraid,” said Brandy.

“I’d rather be afraid ten times than to be caught once,” said Mischief. “There!”

As she snorted, Brandy saw a man on foot step out of a patch of brush hardly a hundred yards away. The stallion flinched in turn; the entire herd swerved to flee with Mischief, for the others had learned to defer to her cleverness, her constant watchfulness. More than once the real leader of a herd has been a mare; Mischief was filling that role now.

“Come on!” she called to Brandy.

But he remained where he was. He had lifted his magnificent head, and was studying the slowly advancing figure. A faint wind came from the man to his nostrils.

“There’s no scent of a gun,” said Brandy. “There’s no smell of iron, you know. And there’s no rope about him. Why should you be afraid, Mischief?”

“As long as a man has one hand, he’s dangerous,” said the mare. “Are you coming, Brandy?”

“I’ll come presently,” said Brandy. “Get the herd down the valley a little. Something makes me want to look at this man a little more closely. I think I know him.”

Mischief instantly fled a furlong farther down the valley, the other horses packed closely around her. There she paused, and sent her call after her mate. But Brandy was standing his ground. Once or twice he flinched, when Mischief whinnied for him. Yet still he lingered in un-decision, for there was something very familiar about that form which came toward him, with hand extended. And now he could hear the voice that passed with a singular magic through all the nerves of his body, soothing him.

It was Charlie Moore, who had come down to try his single hand, where all of the others had failed; the starved, hollow-eyed men of the hunt, the staggering horses, remained high up among the hills, while Moore went down by himself to see what his luck might be.

“Run while you can!” called Mischief, from the distance. “The snake can hold the bird with its eye — and some men can hold a horse, when they come near enough. Run, Brandy!”

Brandy whirled about, tossing his head and then his heels. He slashed his tail right and left, brilliant in the sunshine, before he paused once more. But the half circle in which he ran, had not taken him farther from the approaching figure.

The voice went on. It spoke in sounds which were mostly meaningless, but others were as familiar to Brandy as the speech of his own kind. And, above all, there was the name repeated over and over:

“Brandy! Stand fast, Brandy! Brandy, good boy!”

The stallion let Charlie Moore come straight up to him. When the hand of the man was a yard from his nose, Brandy stretched out his head, sniffed at it, and then bolted at full speed.

Down the valley before him he saw the rest of the herd flying, he heard the rejoiced whinnying of Mischief, and turning in a great circle, Brandy came back almost to the spot where he had confronted Moore before.

His senses were so alert that he could see everything; two buzzards that circled, near and far, in the thin blue of the sky; the thick shadow that dropped along the side of the mesa; the smoke of greasewood that straggled across a nearby hollow; the mist of dust that hung in the air after the passing of the herd. But, most of all, he was aware of the man, the voice, the outstretched hand, the eyes.

What had Mischief said about the eyes of man? These were filled with understanding and gentleness as well. Above all, there was the voice that kept running through his being like a river, and always pouring contented music about his heart.

Far off, Mischief was calling on the highest note of fear and warning.

Brandy shuddered with apprehension, but suddenly he stretched his head to the hand of Moore, saw that hand go past it and grasp the tattered end of the lariat which still hung from his neck. A sobbing noise came out of the throat of Charlie Moore, a sound which Brandy had never heard before. He turned his head to nuzzle the man’s shoulder. Still the grip of Moore was on the end of the rope. Freedom had passed from Brandy at that instant, but he hardly cared, for the caressing words dulled him like an opiate. And what was all the wild freedom in this world, compared with the touch of that hand, as it ran down along his neck, and the penetrating, reassuring music of that voice, filled with promises that green pastures and bright waters alone could not fulfill?

T
HAT WAS HOW
B
RANDY WENT BACK TO THE HANDS OF
men, while Mischief led the herd far off into the intricacies of the Sierra Blanca. Sometimes, in the dawn and in the dusk of the day, she ran out from the rest, or lingered behind them, waiting and watching; but she knew, nevertheless, that there was no real hope, and that what men have taken they will not surrender again. They hold what they put their hands on, and no power except that of other men can remove the prize.

There were more things for Mischief to give heed to than the disappearance of Brandy, however. The buckskin leader was still with the herd, but after his downfall his authority could never again be complete.

There was now no voice that the band followed readily except the whinny of the mare. Her tossing mane was what they looked toward in flight, and her way was that which they followed when, in times of drought, the whole group hungered for water.

One old mare died of water famine. That was the only casualty in the band that Mischief led through the summer and the winter, and into the pale green of spring that spread over the desert like a thin mist. She was great with foal of Brandy, long before; and it was fortunate that, as the gentle season came, no horse hunters appeared with it. For the State had put a price on the wild horses, a bounty, as on so many wolves.

By small marches, the herd wandered where the grass was springing and where water flowed at hand. And on a day when the Sierra Blanca stood white indeed under the western sky, and the sun was already beginning to burn with the full promise of the summer’s heat, the foal was born that men afterward called “Parade.” He was a golden chestnut like his father, Brandy; he was stockinged like him in black silk to the knees and hocks; he had the same sooty muzzle, and, above all, between the eyes, the white sign of his race was printed.

But there were differences, also. Never was there a gentler spirit among horses than Brandy; and never was there a prouder or a fiercer one than that of Parade. When first he stood braced on his long, spindling legs, already his head was high, and his tail arched; already, too, the fire was kindled in his eyes. Mischief, looking him over wisely, knew that she had brought into the world a lord of their kind.

In three days, he could keep up with the galloping herd, and proved it, for on that third day a group of bounty hunters came with racing horses and with crackling guns. For good shooting the reward was fairly high, for the ranchmen were tired of having their saddle stock swept off the range into the band of some wild stallion, to be lost permanently, or else worn out by constant hard traveling. They were striking at the root of the trouble — the stallions themselves. And on this day it was that the buckskin stopped in his stride and squealed with pain.

Parade, looking back, saw the beautiful animal crumble to its knees, then fall flat upon the ground. The wind brought up the sickening odor of blood, and his mother ran beside him, snorting as she ran:

“It’s the Great Enemy! It’s Man! Whenever men come, there’ll be the smell of blood! Look! The pinto mare is down. See how her shoulder is covered with red? The Great Enemy kills from far off. Fly for your life, oh brave, oh noble son of mine!”

Four of the herd were killed on that day, when the band was safe, the long legs of Parade were shaking under him. He lay down in the shadow of his mother, and every staggering beat of his heart thrummed home in his brain the newly learned lessons:

“Man is the Great Enemy! Man kills from afar! With the scent of Man comes the smell of iron and powder, and the latter scent is that of death. There is no wind so cold, there is no sun so hot, as the wrath of Man. Therefore, Man is the Great Enemy.”

He would not forget those lessons. Through that summer and that autumn, he had the point brought home to him more than once. If he learned to run as never a horse on the range had run before him, the bullets of men were what gave him wings. The herd dissolved. Half were dead, half were scattered. There remained only Mischief and her foal, lurking in the great wilderness of the Sierra Blanca, in fear of the very ground on which they trod.

“We must go in a straight line, on and on,” said Parade to his mother. “There is fear all around us! We must go straight on until we leave it behind us.”

She answered: “Fear is a thing that can never be lost, except by slaves. The stupid beasts which wear saddles and carry men in them may be safe, but all the rest of us are afraid. Every wild thing is afraid. Even the wolf goes in fear. The mountain lion sneaks out of its lair to hunt. The grizzly skulks through the brush and hides among the rocks. You want to escape from fear, but it would be easier to escape from yourself. You want to run over the edge of the horizon and find a new world, but all you can ever find is a new skyline. Trouble will rain down on you everywhere out of the brightest heaven. And the wise horse, my son, is he who makes the best of the grass and the water at hand, no matter how far he may have to range for it.”

They went into that winter alone, and it was a bitter one. It began with a norther that whitened the desert and the mountains alike. They had to paw through the snow to get at the scanty grass beneath. Then the Chinook blew. Dark flags flew from the peaks, and the warm wind melted the snow for a day. Afterward the frost congealed the water to ice, a transparent coat of armor through which hoofs could not break.

Even wild horses would have starved then, but Mischief was wise among her kind, and she showed the colt how to forage in the lee of the bluffs where the chinook had not melted the snow, and where it could still be broken away for the sake of the sparse grass beneath.

They lived, but with death fingering their ribs and looking them in the eye every day. Men had hunted them all through the year until winter; now winter itself reached out for them with hands of ice.

Then the wolves hunted them down the Wainwright Valley. Seven great lobos — gaunt skeletons whose loose hides waved and rippled as they ran, red-eyed, with teeth that shone like ice — hunted the mare and her foal through the narrow pass, and out through the plain, and around in a great circle. For three days, they hung to the trail, far slower of foot than the horses, but patient as hunger itself.

The starving colt would never forget how he ran when his legs were numb, of how his mother, when he staggered, came beside him and nipped him cruelly, hip and flank, wringing his tender flesh with her teeth until the torment spurred him into a stronger gallop.

With snorts and with whinnyings, with half-human moans, she scolded him through the length of that frightful three-day run.

“There’s neither heart nor pride in you!” she would say, “and yet you are the son of a king! The blood of a king is in you, but you let a pack of filthy timber wolves run you down! If you were the son of Brandy in spirit as well as the flesh, you’d make the wind whistle so fast for ten minutes that all the skulking flesheaters would give up and stand to howl at the sky.”

Those taunts were more to Parade than cruel nippings that drove him forward; and now, for the first time, the picture of his father began to loom in his eyes, growing greater and greater through the time to come, a picture of a horse like a winged, golden flame. Pride and blood kept Parade running through those three days, until the wolves slunk away and their angry voices rang with hollow echoes down a long ravine, to tell that they had surrendered the contest.

Parade would have fallen, but Mischief put her shoulder against him so that he could stand; well she knew that, once down, the ice on the ground and the ice in the wind would soon freeze the blood that ran in her son.

A week after that, the spring came suddenly, and the first great ordeal had ended. It left Parade with a gaunted belly, a roached back, and a coat shaggy and weather-faded. But it left him all hammered steel in body and in spirit.

That year the grass was good, the water holes were freshened by many rains, and Parade grew with wonderful speed. They picked up a few of the wild strays, willing enough to follow the leadership of the wise mare, Mischief; and again the herd was the salvation of the mare and her foal, for when the horse hunters came with their rifles, Mischief and Parade were always first away, and the rifles did their work on the rearmost members of the band.

It was at this same time that the legend began of a young stallion, a mere yearling, that ranged through the Sierra Blanca with the beauty of a golden thunderbolt. That legend grew. Old prospectors forgot their quest when they heard of it; old cattlemen looked with squinted eyes at the picture that formed far off in their minds; and many a boy on the range planned against the future when he might ride a peerless horse.

By winter, the band had been dispersed once more. Again Mischief and Parade went lonely through the season of ice that was beating the colt with white hammers into the metal that was to make him lord of the range.

When he was a two-year-old, men began to hunt him, not with rifles but with relays of fast horses.

A wild hawk flies better than any tame-bred one because it has to live for twenty hours a day on the wing, and Parade was running constantly. No trainer of horses would have dared to work a colt as the hunters in the Sierra Blanca worked that fugitive.

That autumn, Hammersley, the English rancher, brought up three dozen horses and eight riders, and worked Parade for a month. Mischief had to turn out of the way. He ran for the first time alone; and for a month his keen ears, his blazing eyes, above all, his sense of smell, keener than the nostrils of a wolf, studied all that lay between him and the horizon. And fear crept beside him, rose like a ghost out of the ground, became such a familiar presence that it no longer sapped his strength or filled his lungs with a breath of icy mist. He had been tested a hundred times, and always he had won. Confidence was born. He had the wariness of a grizzly, that wisest animal, but he had the courage of a grizzly, too.

So he endured Hammersley’s famous running, about which men will tell you still, yonder in the Sierra Blanca, and wherever celebrated horse hunts are talked about. For a month, Parade stood off every challenge and then was able to leave the dispirited hunters and go free.

They had lost one man, killed instantly by a fall from a mustangs which put its foot into a hole. They lost five horses; three because of broken legs received in the frantic races through the mountains, one through sheer heartbreak of fatigue, and another so worn to the bone that it was not worth while to drag the poor brute out of the desert.

Afterward, legend increased those losses, multiplying them by three. Men said that Hammersley had spent twenty thousand dollars on the hunt. Parade became a lodestar to attract every lover of great horseflesh.

When the Hammersley hunt ended, Parade went up the Wainwright Valley, found his mother and went off with her.

That was only the beginning of things.

Half a dozen outfits tried for Parade the next year. The most celebrated effort was that of Wilton Parker and Champ Rainey, who clung to the task for six weeks, with an army of horses and a small host of expert riders and ropers.

They failed, for Parade had learned and mastered the most difficult lesson of all, which is that a hunted horse must not run in a circle, but in a straight line. They might start him in a curve, and herd him into it for a time, but eventually he recognized the circle and broke away like a hawk across the horizon. Then they had to plan on his probable lines of retreat, and place relays of horses and hunters along them. It was during this year that Joseph C. Curry ran Parade a hundred miles with eleven relays, and killed six good horses on the way, but Parade escaped with a greater fame than ever. And about this time some of the men on the range began to declare that Parade would never be taken. The best brains had been used against him, yet he always escaped, always with greater and greater ease.

Also, half a dozen fine marksmen started out, in the fall of this year, letting it be known that they would attempt to crease the stallion, since he could be captured in no other way. To crease a horse is to shoot a bullet across the nape of the neck, jarring the spinal column sufficient to stun the animal; but for one horse captured in this way, a hundred are killed. And Sheriff Tom Crawford published far and wide the fact that with his own rifle he would “crease” the man who shot the famous stallion dead. The creasing experts, at that, gave up their attempt.

Parade’s name was known far and wide by this time. Newspapers had taken him up as front page material. Travelers from distant lands begged to be brought within eyeshot of the famous horse. But even this was becoming more and more difficult. He and Mischief had learned how to hide themselves like foxes; they had learned the value of making hundred-mile marches from one good grazing place to another.

And then calamity began. It was not the fault of Parade, but the weakness of Michief, that brought the final great trouble on them in the same year when Parade began to be called the “Hundred-thousand-dollar Horse.”