The Black Stallion Revolts (18 page)

Momentarily his pencil stopped on the paper. He found himself reading. His heavy brows lifted as his eyes widened in surprise. For a long while he stared at the story, reading and rereading it. His pencil began moving again, blackening the lines around the story once more.

“Howdy, Slim.”

He looked up quickly, pushing the paper to one side. “Hello, Allen,” he said.

Allen had a cup of coffee in his hand. He placed it on the table, and sat down beside Gordon. If he had seen Cruikshank, he gave no indication of it. He drank half his coffee, and then said, “That friend of yours, McGregor, puzzles me, Slim.” His narrow brow was furrowed, his eyes on Gordon. “And he gets more puzzling all the time,” he added.

Gordon picked up his own cup of coffee, and finished it. He was frightened. “The kid’s no friend of mine, Allen. Don’t know him at all or anything about him.” He didn’t want to get mixed up with McGregor. Not after having read the story in the paper at his side.

Allen said, “He was working out pretty well for us until a little over a week ago, when I sent him out to look for a wild stallion thought to be on the upper range. I was afraid for my mares and …”

“A wild stallion?” Gordon asked, interested now.

Allen nodded. “You’ll have to see him, Slim. He’s no mustang, but big … mighty big.”

“Then you got him?”

“We got him, all right, but the peculiar part of it is that the kid found him first and didn’t let on to us. In fact, we would have turned back and never got him if Hank hadn’t been along. Hank knew the kid was lying.”

“Strange that he should lie about something like that.”

“And peculiar,” Allen insisted. “Mighty peculiar. But there’s more to it. The kid had gentled this wild outlaw even before we got there. When he knew we had him, he walked right up to the stallion, put a halter on him with no trouble at all, and led him back to the ranch.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Gordon said quietly. “Now and then I’ve run across a small band of horses on the upper ranges. Nobody could gentle a wild stallion that easily.”

Allen put down his hand flat and hard against the table. “That’s what I think, too. But Hank says that sometimes it happens.”

Gordon shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said.

“Come and see for yourself,” Allen said. “And here’s something that puzzles me more than anything else. This morning I gave the kid the opportunity to ride Hot Feet in next week’s races at Preston, and he turned me down! Of course, I could have ordered him to ride, but that’s not for me. Here I thought I was giving him a big break and he kicks it aside!” Allen’s puzzlement showed in his face. “I’d sort of counted on him as my regular rider from the time I took him on. He’s a born race rider. Anyone can see that just by the way he sits a horse.”

Gordon’s bushy eyebrows were raised again. He glanced away from Allen to the door. He was thinking of the package of
Thoroughbred Records
beside Goldie. “How
does
he sit a horse, Allen?”

“With short stirrups, but not so short that he loses his balance or control. And forward, and low near the horse’s neck. You know how most jocks ride, don’t you, Slim? Haven’t you ever seen a race, maybe before you came out here?”

Gordon turned back to Allen. “Yes, I know,” he said. Then after a long pause he added softly, “I’d like to talk to the kid.”

“Come along, then. I’ve got the buckboard outside, and I’ll see that you get a ride back to town later.”

Together they left the restaurant.

When they had gone, Cruikshank twisted his gaunt body off the end stool. He walked across to the booth they had left, his large and gloomy eyes on the newspaper that was still there. His worn hands picked it up, and he read the story just above the crossword puzzle, the one marked so heavily in pencil, the story that had brought the startled, frightened look to Gordon’s face while he was watching him.

Cruikshank reread the description of the boy, and his eyes were no longer gloomy but shifty and bitter. He knew the reason for Gordon’s sudden alarm.
He knew the boy
. His long, bony hands were trembling as he carefully tore the story from the paper, taking part of the crossword puzzle with it. He put it in his pocket. He
would have good use for it, but not right now. He was going to wait until he was sure of the best way to use it. He hated them all for what they’d done to him. He hated the sheriff. He hated Gordon. He hated the kid. But most of all he hated Allen, and maybe what he had on the kid would provide him with a way to get at Allen. Mumbling to himself, he left the restaurant.

The torn newspaper lay on the table. The hole left where the clipping had been removed showed part of the next page. Here, too, there was a story concerning a search for a boy. It was only a few lines in length. It was hardly news any longer.

The man from behind the counter went to the table and cleaned it. He took the newspaper, crumpled it, and threw it in with the other trash to be burned.

Gordon spoke to Goldie again before climbing into Allen’s buckboard. The burro flicked his ears, but otherwise there was no indication that he’d heard. Until he felt the pack on his back his eyes would remain closed.

Taking up the lines of the two horses hitched to the buckboard, Allen said, “No one is going to bother your burro, Slim.” Then he laughed, adding, “And it doesn’t look like he’ll mind waiting a while longer before going home.”

Allen backed up the team, turned and went down the street. They were well outside the town before he spoke again. “I guess I was counting on the kid riding Hot Feet more than I realized. Can’t seem to get it off my mind now.” Allen paused. “Not that it’s terribly important,” he went on. “Last year I picked up a race rider over at Preston, and we won all right. It’s just that riding Hot Feet is a pretty personal thing with me. I’d been looking for someone who’d work on the ranch,
and then ride for me in the races. Larom is too heavy for race riding. I thought the kid was perfect for the job. I guess I’d thought it all along, that’s why his turning me down is hard to take.”

Gordon’s eyes didn’t leave the team. He thought he knew very well why McGregor didn’t want to ride at Preston. McGregor was afraid someone would identify him as the boy wanted by the police. Gordon thought of the news story again. An accomplice in a robbery was one thing,
murder
another. The diner’s cashier had died of his injuries. While the kid had been only the lookout, he was still as responsible for the cashier’s death as the men who’d been caught.

Gordon shifted uneasily in the hard buckboard seat. He wished he hadn’t found that newspaper in the restaurant. Better still, he wished he’d never found McGregor. The last thing he wanted was to become involved in such a mess. But how could he stay out of it now, when he alone knew the whereabouts of someone who was wanted as an accomplice in a murder?

Why was he going to the ranch? Why did he want to talk to McGregor? He wondered what the kid’s real name was. Even the police didn’t seem to know. It didn’t matter, nothing mattered except that he, Gordon, get out of this in some way and still do what he thought was his duty to society. Maybe he expected to talk McGregor into giving himself up to the police. He must have had that in mind when he’d accepted Allen’s invitation. If he had intended to inform the authorities of what he knew, he would have gone directly to the sheriff.

“You’re pretty quiet, Slim.”

“Just thinking,” Gordon replied.

“You don’t think you could get the kid to ride for me, do you, Slim? After all, he’s a friend of yours. He might listen to you.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” Gordon insisted angrily. “I told you I don’t know anything about him.”

“You don’t have to get sore about it,” Allen said. “I just figured you might help him change his mind. After all, he was living with you when I hired him.”

Gordon didn’t look at Allen. “I found him in the desert. He’d been hitchhiking and got lost.”

“The desert’s a strange place to be hitchhiking,” Allen returned. “Lots of strange things about the kid, all right.” He clucked to the horses and their hoofs beat faster on the dirt road.

Allen said nothing more, and Gordon was glad of it. He wished someone else would identify the kid so he could stay out of the mess altogether. Not that he wanted to see McGregor go to jail. He liked the kid. If only it hadn’t been murder, he might have forgotten the whole thing. Now he had to do something about it. He had to see to it that McGregor was apprehended by the police, and yet stay out of it himself. He wanted none of the publicity he knew would result in the kid’s capture. For six years he had lived a peaceful, quiet life. He wanted to keep it that way.

If the kid did ride at Preston, he thought, someone most likely
would
identify him, just as McGregor feared. Especially if he won, and got his picture in the papers. Wasn’t that the answer? He turned to Allen. “Why don’t you change your mind and
order
McGregor to ride?”

Allen shook his head adamantly. “No, Slim,” he said. “He’s got to
want
to ride Hot Feet. That’s the only way he’ll get up on him now.”

A few moments later Allen changed the subject. “Ralph Herbert of the High Crest Ranch in Texas has been after me for months to have a match race at Preston. I bought Hot Feet from him as a weanling, and now that he’s a champion Herbert would like to get him back at any price I set. But I’m not selling Hot Feet, and he knows it.”

Gordon wasn’t listening to Allen. He was trying to figure out a way to get McGregor to ride in the Preston races.

Allen added, “Now Herbert wants a match race between Hot Feet and his horse, Night Wind.”

Gordon heard this, and turned quickly. “You don’t mean the High Crest
Thoroughbred
?”

“That’s him.”

Gordon couldn’t help smiling. “You’d be crazy to consent to such a race. Last year Night Wind was voted Thoroughbred
Horse-of-the-Year
. He’s a great champion, Allen.”

“So’s Hot Feet,” Allen retorted quickly, challengingly. “But how come you know so much about Night Wind?”

“I read about him in some magazines a friend sent me. I used to be quite interested in Thoroughbred racing. Night Wind pulled up lame in the Santa Anita Handicap last winter. They found he had torn a ligament so he was unwound and sent home to High Crest Ranch. They hoped to bring him back to racing.”

Allen said, “You sure know a lot more about him than I do. But maybe it isn’t the same horse. Herbert never mentioned anything like that.”

“It’s the same horse, if his name is Night Wind and he’s a Thoroughbred from High Crest Ranch,” Gordon said quietly.

Allen frowned. “I know that much is true,” he replied. Then his face lightened. “Anyway, Herbert made this proposed match race sound plenty inviting. He wrote that he was sending this Thoroughbred, Night Wind, to California, and could very easily ship him via Preston for the races.”

Gordon interrupted. “Then Night Wind has been put back in training, and is ready to go.”

“Herbert said that match races between Thoroughbreds and quarter running horses were rare,” Allen went on, “and the crowd at Preston might like to see one. He offered to put up five of his best quarter mares as his end of the purse, if I put up …” Allen stopped.

“If you’d put up what?” Gordon prompted.

“Hot Feet.”

“You’d lose him, if you did,” Gordon said. “Stick to your own kind of racing, and leave the Thoroughbreds alone. No quarter horse in the world could stay with Night Wind. Herbert would just like to get Hot Feet from you the easiest possible way … and such a match race would be it.”

“I’d like to get those mares,” Allen said thoughtfully. “I sure would. High Crest Ranch is such a big operation that Herbert’s cornered the finest quarter-horse stock in the country.”

“And some of the best Thoroughbred blood, too,” Gordon added. “That’s exactly why you should stick to quarter-horse racing, Allen.”

“Oh, I’m going to stick to it, all right. That’s why I’d like to get hold of those High Crest mares. But I’m not racing Hot Feet against Night Wind the way Herbert wants it. I’ve written him I’d race Hot Feet any day of the week against his Night Wind at three hundred yards but no farther. He wants the race over a quarter of a mile. I’m not that dumb. Hot Feet’s best distance is three hundred. I’d be taking too big a chance racing him at a quarter.”

“You’d be taking a big chance at any distance,” Gordon said.

“No,” Allen insisted. “Hot Feet could beat anything Herbert has at three hundred yards, and I’d take his mares.”

The ranch was less than a mile away. At the far-off sound of running hoofs they turned to look across the plateau. Allen’s face disclosed his alarm at sight of the running black horse. For a moment he thought the big stallion had broken from his corral and was free. Then he saw the slight figure on the horse’s back and, realizing it had to be McGregor, his fear left him. In its place came swift anger. McGregor had no right to take the black horse from the corral without his permission!