Stolen Stallion (10 page)

C
HARLIE
M
OORE OPENED THE GATE AND ENTERED THE
small corral. He began to walk up and down, his hand lying against the shoulder of the thoroughbred, as Brandy moved beside him, led only by the pressure of that hand.

The mare said quietly to Parade: “There you see it! There’s the slave that loves his slavery!
You
may be like that, one day!” she predicted.

“Never,” said Parade.

Another figure loomed through the twilight.

“Moore!” bawled the voice of Harry Richmond.

Poor Charlie Moore started, and hurried out of the corral. He stood shrinking before Richmond.

“I told you you was fired,” exclaimed Richmond. “What do you mean comin’ back here in the middle of the night? Whatcha tryin’ to do?”

“I was sayin’ ‘good-by’ to Brandy,” answered Moore. “That was all. I was goin’ to say ‘good-by’ for the last time. It’s quite a spell that him and me has been together.”

“I don’t wantcha no more,” declared Richmond. “Get out, and stay out.”

“I was goin’ to say,” muttered Charlie Moore, “that if you didn’t want to pay me no more, I’d be pretty glad to go on workin’ here for nothin’, and takin’ care of Brandy.”

Another figure could be seen by Parade, moving dimly in the background of the dull light. The new man lingered beside a ragged mesquite, his outline blurring with that of the bush. He was within easy earshot.

“Hold on,” exclaimed Richmond. “You ain’t that kind of a fool, are you? You wouldn’t work for nothin’, would you?”

“I’d work for nothin’,” answered Charlie Moore. “There wouldn’t be much meanin’ for life, if I lost Brandy for good and all.”

He held out his hand in an unconscious gesture through the bars of the corral, and the stallion put his soft muzzle against it.

“You’d work for nothin’, and what’d you live on?” asked Richmond curiously. “Because I wouldn’t be feedin’ you. You can count that I wouldn’t be wastin’ no money on an old scarecrow like you.”

“I’d manage somehow,” declared Charlie Moore. “I dunno just how, but I’d manage somehow. I don’t need much to eat. I’m getting sort of dried up, and I don’t need much I could live on stale bread — and Brandy!”

He laughed a little, as he said this. Richmond laughed, too. He said carelessly:

“Well, if you’re that kind of a fool, you can stay on. I don’t particularly hanker after feedin’ and curryin’ the hoss every day. And I guess Lake don’t, either. You can spend as much time with Brandy as you want.”

He turned and went off through the twilight, and his loud, snarling laughter came trailing back behind him.

The man who had paused by the mesquite bush came slowly up. He stood by the corral that held Parade and Mischief, and Parade suddenly lifted his head high in the air.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” asked Mischief.

“Can the dead come to life, mother?” asked the stallion.

“What nonsense are you talking about?” asked Mischief.

“It’s he — it’s the Great Enemy — it’s he!” snorted Parade.

And he stood alert, like a horse at the start of a race, frenzied with eagerness to be gone.

“How are things, Charlie?” asked the voice of the stranger.

Charlie Moore whirled about.

“Hi! Silver!” he breathed.

They shook hands.

“It’s he!” groaned Parade to the mare. “I know his voice. I could tell about him in darkness!”

“What if it is?” answered Mischief. “Does that mean you have to tremble like a foolish colt when it first smells green grass in the spring of the year? What is any man to you?”

“His hands never touched you!” said Parade. “He never drew you back out of death into life. You never drank from the same water with him when thirst was killing you. Listen to his voice speaking! Doesn’t it call to you? Don’t you feel a madness to come to the touch of his hand?”

“Bah!” snorted Mischief. “The touch of his hand? I have no madness to come to the touch of anything except the good open wilderness of the Sierra Blanca.”

“I’ll come to him!” neighed Parade. “I’ll jump the bars or break them down and come to him!” And his whinny rang long and loud across the night air.

Charlie Moore was saying: “It got so’s Harry Richmond, he couldn’t afford to keep me on, so he turned me off. I don’t get no regular pay, no more. But I’m managing to keep along. Where you been, Silver?”

“Out in the Sierra Blanca.”

“Have some bad luck? I see you got a bandage around your head.”

“I had some — bad luck,” admitted Silvertip. “You can call it that. Bad luck!”

He laughed a little, softly, and the neighing of the stallion broke in wildly upon his words.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong with Parade?” murmured Charlie Moore. “Look at him prancin’ up and down. Like he’d want to smash through the corral fence. What’s drove him crazy?”

The neigh of the stallion shrilled through the evening like the shriek of a bagpipe and the thunder of a great brazen horn. It shook one’s soul to hear that battle cry.

Up and down past the bars rushed Parade, swinging rapidly back like a caged wolf, now rearing, now beating at the fence with powerful hoofs, until it seemed that the barrier would surely be beaten down.

Lefty came running, yelling as he approached.

“There comes Lefty,” explained Charlie Moore. “He’s one of the two that caught Parade.”

“One of the two that caught him?” said Silvertip. “I’m glad to know that. The other one was Chuck, eh?”

“That’s right. You know ’em?”

“I know ’em,” said Silvertip. “I’m going on, Charlie. I’ll see you again tomorrow. In the meantime, remember that you haven’t laid eyes on me. There’s something that I want to do. Understand?”

“I understand,” agreed Charlie Moore.

“You’re broke, I suppose,” said Silvertip, drawing back farther from the corral as Lefty drew near to the frantic stallion inside it.

“I got a quarter,” said Charlie Moore. “I ain’t broke.”

“Here’s five dollars,” said Silvertip.

“I ain’t worked for it,” answered Moore. “I can’t take it.”

“You take it, and maybe I’ll be able to show you how to work for it later on,” said Silvertip. “So long, Charlie!”

And so he was gone, stepping quickly away through the night.

Lefty, in the meantime, was striking at the fence of the corral with a stick, and shouting and cursing Parade, but he might as well have called to a storm wind. Parade, every moment, grew still more violent, still rearing, still beating at the fence with his forehoofs, and sending his ear-blasting neigh across the night.

Chuck came. Others gathered. Lantern light fell through the bars of the corral and through the rising mist of dust that kept boiling up from the ground, showed Parade flashing here and there.

“It was that fool of an old Charlie Moore!” yelled Lefty. “He was out here. He done something to Parade! I’m goin’ to take it out of his hide!”

Chuck went to Charlie Moore and grabbed him by the shirt at the throat and flashed lantern light right into the blinking old blue eyes.

“I didn’t touch Parade,” said Charlie Moore. “I wouldn’t do nothin’ wrong to a hoss.”

“Who was out here talkin’ to you?” demanded Lefty.

“A gent that come to look at Parade — but it was too dark to see nothin’, and he went off.”

They could get nothing from Charlie Moore, but they cursed him from their hearts and fell back upon the task of taming the fury of Parade.

Suddenly, it left him as it had come, in a flash.

He stood at the corner of the corral, facing steadily toward the direction in which Silver had disappeared, and the men, climbing onto the fence, looked down on him like explorers upon new lands.

“Something has happened,” said Lefty, at last. “Look at him quiverin’. Look at his eyes. Look at the way his tail is standin’ up. Look at the bend in his neck. By thunderation, that’s the hoss that drove gents mad — the look of him — when he was rangin’ through the Sierra Blanca. His heart’s come back to him!”

“His heart’s come back to him,” said Chuck. “I guess he’ll be quiet now, for a while. Maybe he smelled somethin’.”

They left the horses to darkness.

Still, in the black of the night, Parade remained standing as before, looking out at the southeastern stars.

“What is it now?” said Mischief, at his side.

“Nothing!” said Parade. “He’s gone, and there’s nothing left. But somehow I’ll find a way to tear down this fence with my teeth and hoofs and get out and follow him till I find him.”

“You act,” said Mischief, “not like a horse at all, but like some starved beast of a meat eater. I’ve never seen a horse behave like this, Parade. Not even your father when he was first tasting freedom and ranging the Sierra Blanca like an eagle in the sky. Lie down, be quiet, and remember that tomorrow is another day.”

T
HAT NEW DAY BROUGHT THE BEGINNING OF THE RODEO.
Parmalee, already overcrowded, was now filled to overflowing, and all day long the air was trembling with the lowing of cattle and the neighing of horses, the clashing of horns and the beating of hoofs, until the very earth seemed to come to life. It was early in the morning when Lefty and Chuck brought saddle and bridle to the corral where their stallion was housed. They found Parade wandering restlessly up and down the fence, hunting ceaselessly, hopelessly, for a means of escape.

“It wasn’t no shot of dope that was shoved into him,” said Chuck. “It wouldn’t ‘a’ lasted this long, Lefty. If this here hoss has come to life, we’re goin’ to have a chance of doin’ somethin’ with him in the rodeo race.”

“Agin’ Brandy there?” Lefty sneered.

“We could bet on him for second place,” answered Chuck.

They entered the corral, unnoticed by the stallion. Lefty roped him; Chuck saddled and bridled him, and mounted.

He had barely settled into the saddle, he had barely gathered the reins, when the horse beneath him exploded with incalculable savagery. It seemed to Lefty that the air was filled with a dozen images of that horse and rider. Then Chuck was hurled from the saddle and sent crashing against the fence. His head struck a post; his loose body thumped against the ground.

Lefty dragged out the senseless Chuck beneath the lowest bar of the fence. He dared not enter while the maelstrom continued to rage. Mischief was backed into a far corner, pressing herself into as small a compass as possible, her legs bending under her with fear. Old Brandy had even retreated to the opposite side of his own corral. And still Parade fought, twisted, bucked, until the girths loosened and the saddle fell from him.

At the saddle he went with insane fury. With teeth and hoofs he battered it to a mere blur of what it had been. Then galloping with a ringing neigh around the corral, the loose ends of the reins caught over the top of a post, and the bridle was promptly ripped from the head of the big horse.

He was free, again, sweat-blackened and polished, flecked with froth here and there, magnificent beyond expression.

Lefty looked at that glory of horseflesh with a snarling lip, and then he glanced back at his companion.

The eyes of Chuck had just opened, and they were the glazed eyes of a very sick man.

“Shoot that killer,” said Chuck. “He’s smashed me up. I’m all broke inside. The life’s runnin’ out of me, Lefty!”

But the life did not leave the body of Chuck. They carried him — Lefty and two strangers who happened by — into the barn, and cared for him there. And when a doctor came, the man of medicine made a careful examination and reported that there was nothing to fear if Chuck were kept quietly in bed for a few weeks.

“He was almost smashed in twenty places,” said the doctor,“but being tough stuff, he only bent instead of breaking.”

Chuck was carried on a stretcher to the hotel, and put to bed. By the time he was installed in his room, Parmalee and all the crowds in it had heard the story of the return of the stallion to wildness.

A still more important thing happened to Lefty, as he left the hotel. For he saw a tall fellow walking down the street with a peculiar swing to the shoulders, and to Lefty it was as though he had seen a ghost moving in the open light of day. The figure turned a corner. Lefty saw the white streak of a bandage that passed across the forehead.

Lefty stood transfixed. He said aloud, finally: “If I’d only taken one more look — if I’d only listened to his heart — but I
seen
where that bullet busted right through his brains!”

He went into the bar-room and took three big whiskies in a row. By that time the fumes of them had reached his brain, and the crazy specter of fear was subdued a little. He could think for the first time.

A mere tap on the head with the butt of a rifle would have ended Silvertip, on that other day, when he lay prostrate, his arms flung wide, and his eyes slightly open, exactly like the eyes of the dead. But now he was up and alert.

It was only wonderful that he had not found Chuck and Lefty before this, and put bullets through them. Chuck would now escape — the lucky devil was confined to bed, and according to reputation, Silvertip was not the sort of a man to pick on a helpless enemy.

But he, Lefty, was not helpless! Not only was he up and about, but he carried with him his own reputation as a fighting man. Yet he knew the distance, the infinite gulf, that separated his talents from those of Silvertip.

When the whisky had brought some calm to his mind, Lefty went out to find the sheriff. It was walking in a new world, to go down that street hunting every doorway with his eyes, coming to every corner as though to the mouth of a cannon. But there was no sight of Silvertip, and so Lefty came at last to the office of the sheriff, a little one-room shack where that square-faced, savage man of the law lived by himself.

He was at his desk, laboriously writing a report. He looked at Lefty with bright, impatient eyes.

“I been and heard that your partner was laid out, Lefty,” he said.

“That ain’t why I’m here,” said Lefty. His thin face grew thinner still, as it lengthened with gloom. “I’m here,” he said, “because there’s a gent on my trail that’s goin’ to get me before the day’s out, I reckon. I mean Silvertip is back in Parmalee!”

“I know he is,” said the sheriff. “I’ve heard that talked about, too. How come Silver and you to have bad blood between you?”

“It don’t take no effort to make Silvertip start on a gent’s trail,” answered Lefty. “You know what he’s done in the world. There’s more’n twenty dead men scattered down his trail, and that’s a fact. And them that they count are only the known ones. Maybe there’s twice as many more that ain’t accounted for.”

The sheriff twisted his mouth to one side and grunted.

“When killin’s get more’n five or six,” he said, “I always start in and doubt ’em a good deal. You better do some doubtin’, too!”

“It ain’t the arithmetic that makes Silvertip dangerous, anyway,” said Lefty. “All I know is that he’s after my scalp and I ain’t ready to lose my hair.”

The sheriff began to rub his knuckles across his chin. “I gotta remark,” he said, “that I been and talked to Silvertip some time ago and told him that I was watchin’ him. I gotta remark, too, that for all I’ve ever heard of him, I’ve never heard of anybody sayin’ that he went for his gun first.”

Lefty sighed. He answered: “Look at here. Suppose that you was a bird. Suppose that you met a rattler. Suppose that you tried to get away, and the eye of that snake caught hold of you and held you tight. Why, you’d be swallered, the first thing you knew, and you wouldn’t say it was a fair fight, no matter whether the snake made the first move or not.”

“You mean he kind of hypnotizes gents?” the sheriff asked.

“Sure he does,” said Lefty. “Not with his eyes, but with the rep that he’s got. You take and look at him, and you can see the dead men in his face. If you look at his hands, you can see those hands wishin’ the gun right out of the air. He can shoot quicker than a wasp can sting. And a man has no more chance agin’ him than a spider has when a wasp up and sings in the air over it. The spider, he just lays down and gets ready to die. He’s too scared to run. And that’s the way with most of us when Silvertip is around. We know what he’s done before; we know that he can do it ag’in.”

“There’s folks that have fought him,” said the sheriff. “There’s stories of plenty of folks that have stood up to him.”

“Sure,” said Lefty. “There was a good plenty of ’em in the early days before he got known. And even after that, there was gents that would get together, two or three of ’em at a time, and try their luck with him. There was the whole Harris family that jumped him up north in Montana. There was old man Harris and his five sons, and a coupla cousins throwed in. They cornered Silvertip in a box canyon, and he had to fight his way out. Well, old man Harris stayed behind in that canyon after Silver got out, and there’s only four of the boys left, and most of ’em limp, or something. They used to raise a lot of trouble, the Harrises did, but now they’re the quietest family in Montana.”

The sheriff nodded. “I’ve heard tell of that fight,” he said.

“What I want,” said Lefty, “is to get Silvertip bound over to the peace, or somethin’, while he’s around this here town.”

“There ain’t anything to bind him over for,” said the sheriff. “He ain’t done nothin’, and he ain’t said nothin’. Not that nobody has heard. But I’ll go and give him another talkin’ to. What’s this I hear about Parade goin’ and wakin’ up and turnin’ wild ag’in?”

“I dunno how it is,” said Lefty. “Queer things is in the air. I’ve
seen
what Parade’s turned into, but I dunno how it come about. I’m goin’ to get that Mexican, Jaurez, to ride Parade and gentle him before the race.”

“Jaurez can ride anything that wears hair,” said the sheriff. “He’ll tame Parade, all right. But you ain’t goin’ to win much out of that race, Lefty — not if Parade was twice what he is. It’s a shame to put him into a race like that. It ain’t more’n a mile and a half, and he couldn’t stretch himself out and get warmed up in that kind of a run. It needs one of these skinny, spindlin’ thoroughbreds to sprint a race like that. Like Brandy is, maybe. And besides, there’s a gent here that calls himself Steve Jones, and he’s got a long, narrow, washed-out lookin’ chestnut mare with him — and if he ain’t a jockey, and if she ain’t a ringer right fresh off the big tracks, I’m a sucker. You keep Parade right outta that race. If he had the lot of ’em out in the desert, he’d run their hearts out three times a day, but a race track is different.”

He left the office at the side of Lefty.

“I’ll find big Silvertip,” he said, “and I guess he won’t make no trouble while he’s around here.”

He found Silvertip, in fact, sitting in the long line of loafers whose chairs were on the veranda of the hotel, tipped back against the front wall. He beckoned the big fellow to him, and Silvertip came down into the street. He was making a cigarette and he offered the tobacco and wheat-straw papers to the sheriff.

The sheriff refused them with a gesture.

“You’re here after Lefty,” said the sheriff. “Is that right?”

Silvertip smiled.

“You’re here after Lefty,” said the sheriff. “It ain’t me alone that knows it. Understand what I mean, Mr. Silver?”

Silvertip lighted his cigarette.

“Silence ain’t goin’ to do you no good,” said the sheriff, raising his voice angrily. “I’m givin’ you warnin’ right now to get out of this here town. Move on, and leave Parmalee, and stay out of Parmalee. Hear me?”

Silvertip smiled again.

At this, the sheriff took half a step back. There were many eyes watching him, and he could understand that he was being quietly, silently tested in the minds of all those men who beheld him. Something was demanded of him, some sort of action.

But what could he do?

He could not, after all, pick up Silvertip on a charge of vagrancy. He had ordered the man to leave Parmalee, but since there was no charge against him, he could not force him to move on if Silvertip were minded to resist. He looked up at the white bandage around the brow of Silvertip. He looked beneath that bandage at the face which had been recently reworked in deeper lines, and with a finer, closer modeling. It was not the same man to whom the sheriff had talked not so many weeks before. It was a new soul, incased in flesh which had altered, also. The steel had been given a finer tempering; it possessed a sharper and more remorseless edge.

“I’ve told you,” shouted the sheriff suddenly, “that this ain’t the town for you. Get out!”

It was the crisis. The men along the veranda of the hotel leaned forward, or slanted to one side, and all narrowed their eyes to make sure that they observed every particle of this historical event.

They saw the right hand of Silvertip slowly convey the cigarette to his lips. They saw the end of the cigarette turn red with fire; they saw it lowered; they saw the lips of Silvertip part a little, and rippling tides of white smoke drawn inward, disappearing; and with the exhalation, they saw the cloud of smoke blown with careful aim straight into the face of the sheriff.

The sheriff did not move until every whit of that smoke had been blown in his face. Then the others could see that he was gray and drawn and looking weary, as if with a burden of new years laid on his shoulders.

At last he said: “All right, Silvertip. You’ve called my bluff. I ain’t man enough to lick you. I swaller this insult, but the minute that you step a quarter of an inch across the line of the law, I’m goin’ after you. Every man has gotta die once, and I reckon that my time is pretty close to up!”