Stolen Stallion (4 page)

T
HAT WINTER WAS GIVEN A SPARK OF EXCITEMENT BY POOR
Hammersley’s second great attempt to catch the golden stallion whose beauty had become a devouring fire of his mind. Hammersley was being ruined by his prolonged horse hunting. It was not so much the money he spent on the task as the way his ranch went to ruin during his absences, for everyone he trusted was taking advantage of the placid, good-natured Englishman. Hammersley hunted Parade for three furious weeks of effort, during the cold season, only to find that his well-shod horses could do no better over the frozen ground than could the bare hoofs of the stallion. Mischief, as usual, was simply shunted to the side, and the hunt flew past her, but Parade could not be taken.

In the spring, Parker and Joe Curry combined. They tried a new project, which was to starve Parade with a water famine by fencing off all of the water holes over a considerable district, using tough barbed wire for the task. When the holes were fenced, Curry and Parker made the rounds eagerly and found three of the fences broken down in a singular manner. The horses had not been able to handle the barbed wire, of course, but they had worked at the slender posts, usually of crooked mesquite wood, until one or two of the posts went down. Then the fence was soon flat.

Once Mischief and her son learned the system, a barbed wire fence was no more than a trifle to them, unless the posts were big and sunk deep in firm ground. So that laborious effort on the part of Curry and Parker became history, and the legend of the golden stallion grew more formidable than ever. The time had come when tens of thousands of ardent sympathizers prayed that the great horse would never be captured. And at that very time, trouble was preparing for Parade, a mysterious and unexpected danger.

It came about in this way. He and Mischief had gone to the northern limits of the range of the Sierra Blanca, not by chance, but because they were taken with a longing for the grass which grew rank and heavy on the slopes of the hills that reached like fingers into the desert. Here were scrub trees, too, and masses of shrubbery whose green tips made delectable provender to the tough palates of the desert-bred horses. Sometimes the pair ventured to remain among those pleasant foothills for as much as a a week at a time, though as a rule caution made them change their place of residence after a two- or three-day halt.

They had come up off the sands to relish this earthly paradise; in half an hour they had cropped an abundant meal of the long, rather salty grass. They had drunk deep at a rivulet of cold, pure water, and then began to pluck at the green, tender sprouts that tipped the branches. Mischief lifted her wise head, after a few moments, and snorted.

“Do you find that scent in the air?” she asked.

“I do,” said Parade. “As foul as a dead body; nothing but a buzzard could like it!”

“Yes, a buzzard,” said Mischief, “or the Great Enemy, or a bear.”

“The Enemy?” said Parade. “Will Man like such a thing as that?”

“All meat eaters are foul,” said the mare, “and even if you know very little about the matter, you understand that Man is a meat eater.”

“That is true,” said Parade, “but I can’t understand it.”

“You are young, my son,” said Mischief, looking over the bronze and rippling strength of the stallion, “and you must learn that that which is not understood is always strange, but the horse of much understanding is the lord of the herd. The horse that cannot understand, at least should be silent. There was your father, Parade. He was a king of horses. I shall never see his like again. But he understood that it was best in everything to defer to my experience, and that was why he led the herd gloriously for the time he was with it. As for understanding that Man could enjoy such a scent as that one yonder, let me tell you the fact. Man himself puts out those horrible odors in order to attract the four-footed meat eaters — wolves and bears. I have smelled it before, and there is always a trap near it!”

She began to work cautiously up the wind, with Parade moving beside her, a little to the rear. Now that age had dulled the edge of her speed, she liked nothing better than to show off her superior experience. She moved like a cat, her knees bending with readiness to spring to one side or the other. And Parade kept one bright eye on her movements, the other on the ground they passed over.

Presently, she paused.

“There’s the bush that the smell has been put on by Man. What a stench! And somewhere near us there is sure to be a trap.”

She pawed lightly at the sand in front of her. A bright thing leaped up out of the ground. A huge mouth had opened, and powerful teeth clanked together — a jaw without body or head, a very incarnation of evil!

The thing lay still on the ground, now. Parade had covered a hundred yards in the twinkling of an eye, but the whinny of his mother called him back. He came prancing and dancing, feathering himself on tiptoe.

“That is the trap,” said the mare calmly. As a matter of fact, she was trembling inwardly with excitement, thinking how close that terrible engine had come to her foot.

“Mother,” said Parade, “there is more courage in you than in a whole herd, and more wisdom in you than in twenty old mares whom time has eaten away like the mange.”

“Well, well,” said Mischief contentedly, “there is very little wisdom in the management of this world, I fear, but after all, I dare say that it is wisdom that makes courage bright. Not that I should be saying such things of myself. But it is a cruel pupil that denies credit to a teacher, and experience has taught me, my son. There is a sample of the work of the Great Enemy. You can see what it would do.”

“It would smash the leg of a wolf. It must be meant for a bear,” said Parade, snuffing at the thing from a distance, staring at it with his great, bright eyes.

“Yes, for a bear,” said Mischief. “And one day a bear would have stepped into it, perhaps, and then there would have been a crashing and smashing and a roaring and snarling, until the hills trembled.”

“I would like to see such a thing,” said Parade. “The cunning devils have eaten enough horseflesh!”

“Aye,” said the mare. “There is a living brain in the forefoot of a grizzly. It is delicate enough to pick a small grub out of rotten wood; but it is also strong enough to smash in the ribs of a grown horse. Well, if men are near enough to have set this trap, it is time for us to leave this place.”

She started to swing around.

“Back up! Back up!” exclaimed Parade. “Put down your hoofs where you stepped before or — ”

“So?” said Mischief angrily. “Has the time come when you are to start teaching your mother what — ”

The ground seemed to lift to meet her right forefoot, as she spoke. She sprang back on three legs; to the fourth clung a naked pair of iron jaws like that which already had been snapped shut. But this time the trap had closed with only a horrible crunching sound.

Mischief did not struggle, but a sweat of agony spotted her neck and her flanks. She bowed her head and sniffed at the engine that clutched her. Behind the jaws appeared a heavy chain, lying snakelike upon the ground.

“Go, my son,” said the mare. “They have taken me now.”

“I shall never leave you,” said Parade, all dark and shining in a moment with sweat. “I shall stay here — ”

“And be caught with a rope and be turned into a slave?” exclaimed Mischief. “As for me, I am old. I have no great time left to me. Besides, this is only a right judgment. I have been proud, and, therefore, I was blind. Age ought to kill pride before it kills the body, but I have remained as high-headed as a young filly in her second spring. Parade, leave me. Will it be a comfort to me to pass under the saddle and bridle again and know that you are suffering with me? What? You haven’t felt spurs! Listen to me and don’t be a fool.”

A quiet rustling approached them, no louder than the small sound of a wind that walks among green leaves. From among the shrubbery appeared the clumsy body of a grizzly bear, with a vast rounded head, and the wrinkles of wisdom cut deep between the eyes.

Mischief, with a groan of fear, lunged back. The long chain rattled out its length and then held firm. The mare sank on her haunches.

“My son!” she neighed.

Parade sprang before her. He seemed ready to hurl himself at that formidable monster, that creature made for war.

The grizzly stood up with its paws held together, very like a prize fighter stuffing his hands deeper into the gloves.

“A little closer, my son,” growled the bear, and his red eyes shifted in his head. A drool of saliva dripped from a corner of his mouth.

“Away from him!” commanded the mare. “He looks clumsy, but he can charge like a rock jumping down hill, and with one stroke he can smash in your skull!”

Parade drew back, slowly, unwillingly.

The bear dropped forward on all fours, with a rolling motion, at once wonderfully clumsy and with the grace of infinite strength.

“Horse meat,” said the grizzly, “is good for a working bear. This bit looks old and tough, but there will be a few tender places along the back. And if a fool has a soft heart, then hers should make good eating!”

He waddled closer to Mischief. With a dull eye of despair, she saw destruction approaching. Parade, in futile agony, galloped around and around them, while a cloud of dust rolled upward toward the sky. All that ground might be sowed with traps, but in his frenzy he forgot. If he could dart in and strike with his forehoofs — but he knew that the paws of the grizzly were a subtle pair of thunderbolts from which he could not escape.

Mischief lurched to her feet, suddenly, as though she wished to take her death standing.

“And what a fool you were,” said the grizzly, “to walk on ground where a bear feared to tread. But it will soon be over now. There is one lesson that every fool must learn, in the end, and that’s the lesson that I’m about to teach you. This is a lucky day. I’ve almost forgotten horse meat — and here it is in a fine lump for me! I would rather have a colt half your size, madame, but I shan’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“Parade! Away!” neighed the mare suddenly. “They’re coming from behind you.”

The stallion looked back, and he saw three riders galloping straight at him over the ridge of the hill. Terror sent him away in a bright golden streak.

Behind him, he saw the grizzly scuttling off with a speed wonderful for such a loosely jointed body. He heard the rifles clang like sledge-hammers beating together, face to face. He saw the bear halt, turn, and charge in. He saw it pause again, and slump slowly to the ground. Then the dust of his own raising veiled the picture from the eyes of Parade.

He ran on, and he ran alone. He would run forever alone, he felt. The Sierra Blanca became suddenly more lofty and more vast, and he shrank to a lonely speck that crawled aimlessly across it and trailed behind a little wisp of dust.

I
T WAS
D
AVE
L
ARCHMONT, CATTLE KING, HORSE BREEDER,
and great hunter, who took the pelt off the dead grizzly, and then led Mischief limping to his ranch. It looked as though that torn foreleg would never heal properly, and he would have killed the mare, but he had recognized that streak of golden lightning which had dashed away from the scene. The mother of Parade was worth having, even if she could only stand on three legs. If she could give the world one foal like the famous stallion, might she not give another, and another?

He took Mischief back to his ranch, not far from Parmalee, and straightway his place was deluged with visitors. They came in floods, with cameras. The corral where Mischief stood was constantly surrounded. Not that she filled the eye more than many other horses, but because an aroma, a glamour of great romance, clung to this mother of Parade, this companion of his many adventures.

Her wound healed. She could walk, trot, canter, and even run, but at every gait she limped, and she would always limp. The tendons had been frayed by the steel teeth of the trap, and now they were drawn a vital bit shorter.

Big Harry Richmond, fatter of body, more like a great blue crane than ever, came and stared at her, and with him came Charlie Moore. He was close to sixty now, but it was not the passing of the years that had suddenly turned his hair white. Grief had done it, and the knowledge that he was still bound inexorably to Richmond.

“It’s comin’ close to the end, Charlie,” said Richmond. “Now they’ve got Mischief, they’ll be gettin’ hold of Parade one of these days. And there’ll be a lot of whoopin’ then. Larchmont,” he said to the other rancher, “look at the way she’s marchin’ up and down that fence, lookin’ out at the evenin’ as it comes over the hills. You reckon she’s lookin’ for Parade, too? You reckon that he might show up, one of these days?”

Larchmont shrugged his shoulders.

“You been hearin’ a lot of talk about that Parade horse,” he said. “You got him all built up. Think he’d have the sense to come all the way down here from the Sierra Blanca? Even if he had the sense, think he’d have the nerve? No, sir, that Parade knows enough to be scared of men, and he’s goin’ to stay on his own campin’ grounds, where he knows the howl of every wolf and the hoot of every owl. He ain’t no miracle horse, Richmond.”

But that same evening, Parade came over the naked hills toward Parmalee.

He moved like a soldier who has passed inside the lines of the enemy; and, in fact, all around him there were signs of the Great Enemy, and the scent of iron was never out of his nostrils. Half a dozen times, before this, he had ventured farther and farther over the trail by which Mischief had been taken from his ken. He knew how it pointed, and now he was determined to follow it to the end.

But every step was a mighty peril to him. On the trail there was the smell of iron from the hoofs of shod horses. Iron again breathed at him, new or rusted, from the fences. And through the air came the scent of such food as the flesh eaters could relish, mingled with smoke, and again the poisonous breath of hot iron.

There was iron everywhere. The stain of it filled the air. And then again he would pass a huge barn, a dark blotchy outline in the distance, out of which the wind carried to him such fragrances as must be found in the heaven of horses: the sweetness of sun-cured hay, and delights that Parade could guess at but could not know.

He went on at a trot or a swinging lope, most of the time, only slowing to a walk when the way led too close to a dwelling of man. And so he came across the hollow and up to the horse corral of Dave Larchmont.

There were full thirty head of mares and young colts in that corral now. Mischief stayed there alone, during the day, in order that the curious might satisfy their eyes by gazing upon her; but at night, all the best of the grazing saddle stock was herded back to this place of security. Dave Larchmont had invested many thousands of dollars in working up that nucleus of a saddle string which was to be the delight and wonder of the range. He could not afford to let horses worth five hundred a throw wander abroad, where careless fellows might “borrow” them here and there.

He penned them up at night, and let one cowpuncher ride night herd over them.

Parade, from the deep darkness of the hollow, saw that rider pass and repass, and his strength of will loosened in him. He studied the wind that blew to him from the crowd in the corral, but there were too many conflicting scents for him to pick out Mischief from the lot. Only a premonition, an instinct, warned him that she might be there.

He whinnied. It was a mere whicker, a shadowy whisper of sound. Out of the entangled shadows of the corralled horses, it brought one form that moved rapidly up and down the line of the fence.

Now he knew for certain that Mischief was there. The rider passed. He paused on the farther side of the corral to roll a cigarette, and as he smoked, he sang, softly, as a good puncher will do when he rides night herd; and as he sang, he looked toward the yellow-lighted window through which the murmuring voices of his companions drifted, as they sat at their poker game. Chance can play cruel tricks, but none so evil as when it sends out into the night a fellow who has plenty of money in his wallet when a poker game is at hand!

Parade, in the meantime, went up the slope like a great cat, with the stars striking dull sparks out of his lustrous coat. Mischief followed him down the inner side of the fence. There were eight feet of that fence, and the bars were close, until they came to the gate, which was built of far lighter stuff, so that it could be handled more easily. Not because it was a gate, but because the bars here were farther apart, Parade paused, and thrust his head between them, and touched the tremulous muzzle of Mischief.

“Be quiet — hush! There is a man on guard,” said Mischief.“And he carries a gun, which you know about, and a rope, also. He will be at you like a mountain lion, if he guesses that you are here. Oh, my son, I have told the others that you would come. It is terribly rash of you, but love is greater than mountains and stronger than rivers. What have you done since I left you?”

“I have been alone,” said Parade. “I have been alone in the desert, afraid of shadows that seemed to be dropping out of the sky. The Sierra Blanca is ten times as great as before, and I am ten times as small. How has it been with you?”

“I am lamed,” said Mischief. “I can run, but not as I ran before. Men come every day and look at me. They speak a great deal in the voices which we cannot understand. I am sad, but now I must pay for my pride and folly.”

A tall colt with a great white blaze on his forehead came curiously toward them.

“Go back!” commanded Mischief, swinging toward the interloper.

As the mare swung away from him, Parade pressed harder against the gate to come nearer to her. The wood creaked and groaned. A sudden sense of the weakness of that barrier ran tingling to his brain. One thrust might down the gate; one effort might set the door wide for his mother.

The guard had heard the sound.

“Halloo! Halloo!” he called. “Steady, boys! Don’t crowd that gate, you fools!”

He started his horse at a gallop, and came swinging around the corral. Parade could see the hat and the head sailing past the horizon stars.

Should he recoil, and bound down the slope of loosened rock? He snorted with the desperation of fear and hope commingled, and with one thrust of his shoulder he burst the fragile lock of the gate. It swung in, and before Parade himself had recovered, Mischief was through the gap. Not she alone, but the tall colt with the white blaze followed, and Parade, as he turned and shot down the slope, sent his mighty neighing blowing like a red flag to call the others.

They came, for in that neigh there was the promise of freedom, the defiance of masters, the whole band of Dave Larchmont’s chosen horses burst through the gateway and hustled down the slope after their leader.

Right at them, from the flank, charged the guard.

He had drawn a revolver and was firing it repeatedly into the air to give the alarm. His wild shouts rang back to the house, and brought the other punchers in a fury of haste.

But they were far too late. By the time they had saddled their commoner horseflesh from the other corral, the stream of the liberated was pouring far off toward the Sierra Blanca.

The cowpuncher vainly spurred behind them. He was able to overtake Mischief, but what was she, compared with the fortune in horseflesh which was streaming away into the night? Desperately he rode, but when the dawn came, he had merely succeeded in tracing the fugitives to the edge of the desert.

There he paused because his mustang was exhausted. And far off to the north of him, Mischief jogged contentedly on. She knew where to find her son, and in the Wainwright Valley, sure enough, she discovered him before noon of that day, with such a herd gathered around him as never another wild stallion ever was lord over.

Up and down ranged Parade, eying his new possessions, mastering them with a kingly eye, and keeping a wary lookout for the dangers that would surely come rolling over the horizon before long. When Mischief came, he went to greet her, and they moved together up and down.

He exulted: “Men are not the great masters, after all. They can be met. They can be beaten. I have beaten them, mother!”

She quaked as though a strong wind had cut at her.

“You saw how they put teeth in the ground, teeth that will bite though there is nobody behind them? Ah, well, there would be no fools, except that they rejoice in their folly! My son, I have told you of the danger in the tooth of the rattlesnake, and the wiles by which a wolf will hamstring the greatest stallion in the world, and the cunning of a hawk in the air, and the wisdom of an otter in a stream filled with fish, but now I tell you that all of these are nothing compared with man. I have felt his hot iron burn into my skin. Twice he has reached into the wild desert and taken me. Will you still be a fool and rejoice in your folly?”

For answer, Parade neighed loud and long.

Every head among the stolen horses snapped up from the grazing; every eye shone with new brightness, turning toward the master.

“Do you see?” said Parade. “They are mine! And they can run over the ground like birds gliding down the sky. When the horse hunters come, how will they be able to catch such horses as these, with your wits to give us the warning, and my heels to show the herd the proper way? We have been wandering like foolish little hunted things. Now we can live like lords of the earth!”