Stolen Stallion (6 page)

S
ILVERTIP RODE SIXTY MILES THE NEXT DAY.
T
WICE HE
came within rifle shot of the horse herd; once he saw in the distance the flash of a golden star, gliding rapidly across the earth. But these animals had become, by dint of constant flight, more wary than so many antelope. Each time that he drew close, he heard the signal whinnying, faint and far; and then the herd dissolved in distance and sent back to his ears only the subdued thunder of trampling hoofs.

He was not surprised by the difficulties. He would have been amazed had they been less. And the resolution of Silvertip hardened like steel when it is properly tempered in ice water.

It was close to evening when he saw smoke rising in a thin gesture across the sky. At the base of that smoke he found two men camped in a small mesquite tangle, with a muddy blotch of a water hole near by. They gave him a wave of the hand and continued their cookery.

His gelding was thirsty enough to have drunk the filthy water as it stood, green scum and all. But Silvertip kept him back until a trench had been dug beside the water hole, a foot or so from the edge of it. Slowly that trench filled with liquid filtered through the intervening wall of sand, and out of that Silver let the weary horse drink its fill.

In the meantime, he took note that his was the first filter hole that had been dug beside the water, and that the little lump-headed mustangs of the other two men were hardly of the gear or type that would be expected to come within speaking distance of Parade. It was apparent that the two were on the trail of the great stallion; it was equally clear that they were hunting, not his body but his scalp.

With his gelding hobbled to feed on the wretched rags of grass that grew among the mesquite, Silvertip went over to the camp of the strangers.

They looked like two brothers. They kept the hair on head and face conveniently short by means of clippers that had left the marks of their cutting. They wore, also, grease-blackened canvas coats, in spite of the heat of the desert evening; and they had bright, small, squinting eyes. One of them was cleaning his rifle. Silvertip sat down cross-legged and began to eat his supper.

They could have offered him some of their food, when they saw that he was chewing parched corn only. But it was only after a long interval that one of them said:

“There’s a drop of coffee here. I’ll give it to you. The rest of our chuck, we’re goin’ to need it, maybe.”

“I don’t want the coffee,” said Silver. “On a trail like this, I want to cut right down to the essentials, for a beginning. Parched corn is good enough for me.”

“Maybe a sage hen could live on that dead feed,” said one of the bearded men. “It don’t look human nor right nor nacheral, to me.”

“It takes some chewing,” said Silver. “That’s all it needs.”

“Look here,” said the other man, “you’re a long ways out to be havin’ nothin’ but that. You mean to say that you ain’t got no bacon or salt or coffee or flour or nothin’ like that along with you?”

“A man can travel a lot better light than he can loaded,” answered Silver. “I’ll stick to the corn till I catch my horse.”

The two looked sharply at one another.

“What hoss you lost?” they asked.

“A chestnut stallion with black points,” said Silvertip.

“He’s lost a chestnut stallion, Chuck,” said one of the men gravely.

“Yeah. With black points, Lefty,” said “Chuck.” He asked Silver: “You might be meanin’ Parade?”

“That’s the one,” said Silvertip.

He looked away from the others, as though the sudden keenness of their eyes meant nothing to him. The sun was down. All the hollows were filled with blue dusk; a black mesa, rimmed with light, stood in the west, and out of the east marched purple headlands. Far above, like clouds in the sky, hung the white heads of the mountains.

“You say he’s your hoss, partner?” asked “Lefty,” as he paused in the cleaning of his rifle.

“He’s my horse,” said Silvertip.

He saw the eyes of the others glint as they exchanged glances.

“Buy him or trade for him or breed him?” asked Chuck shortly.

“I looked at him,” said Silvertip, “and he’s mine.”

Suddenly Lefty broke into laughter.

“He looked at Parade, and Parade belongs to him,” said Lefty.

“Bought him with a look,” said Chuck. “Cheap at the price, eh?”

“Dirt cheap,” said Lefty. “What would you do if you had him, stranger? Show him to folks at a nickel a look?”

“When I catch him up,” said Silvertip, “I’ll know what to do with him, all right.”

“Yeah — when you catch him up,” said Lefty, sneering.

Chuck pointed.

“You usin’ a one-hoss outfit to catch Parade?” he asked.

“That’s my outfit,” said Silvertip.

The two men looked at one another and broke into fresh laughter that ended suddenly, as though they were unused to the sound and it had startled them somewhat.

“There’s some,” said Chuck, “that’ve come up here into the Sierra Blanca with twenty men and fifty hosses, all to try and catch Parade, but they ain’t caught him. Maybe you’ll have better luck with one hoss. Maybe brains’ll make up the difference.’

“Maybe they will,” said Silvertip. “All I want is a chance.”

He rose, having finished the munching of that difficult meal. From the dying fire he picked out a small stick of wood, the end of which was a glowing coal. He flung it far into the air, drew a Colt, and fired. A puff of sparks flared dimly in the evening light and died out. There was no sound of the wood striking lightly on the ground, afterward. Chuck and Lefty stared at one another.

“What’s the idea of that?” asked Lefty suddenly, and with a changed voice.

“I have to keep my hand in, that’s all,” answered Silver. “There’s likely to be trouble before me.”

“You goin’ to crease Parade? Is that your idea?” asked Lefty.

“No,” said Silvertip. “That’s not the idea. But the fact is that people tell me about a parcel of skunks who are out here in the Sierra Blanca hunting for Parade, not because they ever want to sit on his back, the way I do, but because they want the thousand-dollar reward that’s been put on his head.”

He paused, and put up his revolver. The silence was perfect, except that the fire crackled dimly.

“If you should run into anybody of that sort,” said Silvertip, “you might tell ’em that the man who shoots Parade will have to shoot me afterward. Otherwise he won’t have a chance to enjoy the thousand dollars he pulls down.”

“You’d go after him, eh?” said Lefty.

“The way I’d go after a mad dog,” agreed Silvertip. “I’d shoot him on sight, and no jury in this neck of the woods would ever convict me for doing it. Not to the man who kills my horse.”

“What I ain’t quite figured,” said Chuck softly, “is just how you come to own Parade.”

“I’ll tell you how it happened,” said Silvertip. “He was made for me, and now I’ve come to get him. That’s the reason.”

T
HERE WAS NO PLAN IN THE MIND OF
S
ILVERTIP ANY
more than there is in the mind of a wolf when it settles to the long trail behind an elk, in winter; there was simply a consuming hunger that drove him on. He got sixty miles a day out of his gelding, for six days. Then he saw that the limit of endurance had been reached, and he abandoned the animal in a spot where there was both good water and good grass. The saddle had to stay behind, of course, and so did everything else of weight, except the main essentials. These were a forty-foot manila rope of the closest weave, a quantity of parched corn, a bridle, a Colt with a few rounds of ammunition.

The heavy gun would have been left behind, also, but Silver had to keep in mind the statement which he had made to Lefty and Chuck. By the grace of fortune, they might have spread the news of his threat far and wide, by this time; and in the Sierra Blanca the law is thinner than the clear mountain air. It might well be that some of the headhunters would combine to drop down upon him and wipe him out, before they went ahead with their hunting of the stallion.

Many men, of course, were crossing and recrossing the desert on the trail of the famous horse; but no one before, like Silvertip, had been mad enough to attempt the pursuit on foot.

He walked fifty miles the first day, in his narrow riding boots. After a five-hour halt for sleep, he could not force his bleeding, swollen feet back into the boots.

He cut them up and tied the pair of leather soles under his feet, as sandals. They made wretched footgear. His feet overlapped the narrow soles; blisters began to rise. But he tramped forty miles that day, and came right up with the herd in the dusk of the evening. He was a scant hundred yards from the outskirts of the horses before the alarm sounded.

They went away like a flock of geese volleying through the air. Behind them, from the left, the golden stallion swept across the rear, brushing the stragglers before him; and to the dazed eyes of Silvertip it seemed that fire flew from the feet of the horse.

Into the gathering night they charged, and Silvertip went on, in spite of the tormenting pains of his feet. Twice more, through the dark of the night, he roused them, for they must not sleep or rest at ease. That was the main point of his plan. He had ridden far enough to wear out their first strength, but only constant nagging would suffice to reduce them to the point where he could have his chance at the golden horse.

In the dawn, he fashioned a new pair of sandals out of the tops of the boots. They were rudely made. They allowed his feet to slip and slide. Sand worked into them and cut at his skin like gnawing rodents. But he forced himself to walk on. Only by maintaining a marching gait could he ever win.

Over the horse herd he had one vast advantage — that the horses had to pause for hours every day in order to pick up enough grazing to support them while, for his own part, he could eat and still march along. And they could only carry water in their bellies, whereas he could keep the canteen at his hip well filled. But all of these advantages were wasted unless he could keep up a steady, forcing march.

He went for three days of torment, until the improvised sandals had been worn to rags. Then a coyote came imprudently near to his camp, one evening, and got a bullet between the eyes. Silver made new sandals out of part of that hide. The rest of the skin he stretched on mesquite twigs, roughly tied together to make a frame, and when he started the march this day, he carried the frame across his shoulders, so that the skin might cure in the sun. At intervals, when he paused, he rubbed the coyote’s own fat and brains into the drying leather.

Baked all day, and all the next day, in the fierce sun of the Sierra Blanca, that hide had become fairly good leather before he cut from it another pair of sandals and fitted them to his battered feet.

Every step was now a torment, and still he forced himself to the swinging stride. He dreamed of shoes. Even the battered old flopping shoes of a crippled beggar would have been heaven to him. The strain told on the unsupported arch of his instep. The muscles up the shin and the back of the calf revolted against this new pressure. When he permitted himself to rest, shooting pains darted through his legs and up into his body. When he rose to walk again, he could literally hear the blood crushed out from his wounded feet.

He began to tear up his underclothing, his shirt, even his outer clothes, to make bandages.

In those few days, he had grown thin. At the end of eight days of marching, he looked at himself in the stagnant surface of a water hole and saw a starved face, lips chapped until they were white, eyes buried in shadows. His ribs stood out, and when he dropped his chin, it struck against the great bony arch of his chest. Every ounce of fat had been whipped away from him — and still his diet was parched corn, and his work was almost twenty hours a day of steady marching.

He went on. He knew, with the close of every day, that this was the end; but the next morning he was gone again on the trail, and the vision of the stallion drew him forward almost from step to step.

Results began to show now. Those fine horses from the Larchmont place, which had been so hunted before, were the first to fall to the rear. He passed them, one after another, gaunt, failing skeletons. It was a bitter temptation to put a bullet through the head of one of them and use the incalculable masses of hide to make for himself new, capacious moccasins; but he knew that such theft is worse than murder, and he had to let those beaten horses fall back past him.

Then, one day, he found himself listening to a laughing, raving voice. It was his own. The realization shocked him out of the trance into which he had walked. He found his lips twitching, his hands opening and shutting convulsively, and in his brain the streaming of a vacant wind that would contain no thought.

He needed better food than parched corn, that was clear, so he used two valuable bullets to kill two mountain grouse as he struggled through the foothills that day. He spent twenty-four hours marching slowly, pausing now and again to build a fire and roast portions of the flesh. When that food was consumed, he lay down and slept ten hours. On rising, he was a new man.

His feet now pained him less. They were scarred, deformed, swollen into horrible things; but they were not tormenting him so much. New callouses were spreading. There were few germs in this air to infect the wounds, and gradually they dried up. At every halt, he exposed them to the burning strength of the sun, and the sun itself seemed to be a miraculous healing agent.

It became less a matter of the torment in his feet than of the strength of his body. That strength never had failed him before, but it was doing so now. Still he kept the same swinging stride, no matter how his muscles yearned to shorten it.

And the horses of the herd were dropping out, day after day, day after day. The mustangs now failed continually, and he saw them fall past him to the rear, gaunt creatures, often standing with eyes closed and heads hanging, as though they had decided to wait for death to strike them down and free them from the torment of this pursuit.

But there remained, at the last, an old mare and the shining stallion. She was thin enough, and she went with a limp in one foreleg, yet she managed to keep going. As for Parade, sometimes it seemed to the bitter heart of Silvertip that he had marched all this distance in vain, seeing that the great horse appeared as rounded and smooth and filled with power as ever. Only now and then, when luck brought him quite close, could Silver discover that the stallion was stripped finer than before. The whole outline and splendor of the animal were unaltered; but when the sun fell at a certain angle, the shadows between the ribs appeared.

Sometimes, also, it appeared certain to Silvertip that, even if he came within rope-throw of the horse, he would not be able to accomplish anything. Unless he managed to catch the stallion by a foot, how could Parade be thrown? Silver was no master with a rope. With knife or gun he was at home, but he had not invested many of the days of his life in the dull, honest work of a ranch.

In fact, he was not thinking a great deal of what he would do in the end. The goal that drew him was quite blind. Somehow, in some way, he would finally be able to touch the golden stallion with his hand. That was all. That was the end of his desire. After that, a miracle would give the possession of Parade to him. It was, he told himself, a sort of gigantic game of tag. When he touched Parade, the game would have ended!

There was little or no difficulty in keeping to the trail now. In the beginning, sometimes the stallion would put a great many miles, suddenly, between him and his pursuer, and on every one of those instances he would have dropped the hunter for good and all, except that the course of Parade, when he bolted away, was always straight; by an air line it could be followed. Now, a dozen times in a single day, the vision of the old mare and the shining horse would come into the eyes of Silver, but never without making his heart swell suddenly, never without lightening his step.

He had gone on for thirty days, through the burning sun of the Sierra Blanca. He was blackened to the color of a half-breed, when he came, at last, to what seemed to him the suicide of Parade.

It was a thing that he could not believe, at first. It was his understanding of the thoroughness with which Parade knew the entire Sierra Blanca that made the thing more grotesque. But the fact was that, when he followed the stallion to the mouth of Salt Creek, he saw the old mare drifting sluggishly south, away from the entrance, while the hoof marks of Parade went straight on into the mouth of the ravine.

Suicide — for a horse in the condition of Parade, it certainly seemed no less, for Salt Creek was a narrow cleft that led through the foothills, straight into the heart of the Sierra Blanca, for a hundred and twenty miles. And through the course of all those miles it was fenced on either side by time-polished cliffs, hundreds of feet high.

There are greater canyons than Salt Creek, but all have water flowing through them, the visible agent of the visible work. Yet water was nowhere near Salt Creek. Through a hundred and twenty miles of it, the traveler could wander, the sand underfoot as white as salt, the heat confined and focused by the cliffs, the air almost always unstirred by any wind. And not until the head of the terrible valley is reached is there water.

These things must have been known to Parade, and yet he had entered the gap willingly. That was why the heart of Silver stood still, and he groaned to himself incredulously: “Suicide!”