The Black Stallion Revolts (16 page)

The shadows from the lofty walls had met an hour before, and night had come to the canyon. Yet McGregor continued standing beside the stallion, his hands on the shaggy unkempt coat as if afraid to let go
lest he lose him again. He thought how much he would like to brush him and make his coat glisten. Once before it had shone beneath his hands. He knew this, too.

The air became cold. A wind stirred, and then mounted in intensity until it was whipping the stallion’s heavy mane and forelock. Short neighs came from the far end of the canyon, and the stallion turned to look at the mares. But he did not leave the boy.

A low whistle and stomping of hoofs broke the stillness of the upper canyons, and McGregor remembered the horse he had tied to the scrub tree.

The black stallion turned, too, his head held high, his eyes afire. Every line of his gigantic body trembled. He was ready to go up the canyon, when the boy spoke to him in the language they alone understood. Sounds and words flowed effortlessly and without question from McGregor’s lips.

The stallion screamed his shrill clarion call of challenge but did not move. He stood still for several minutes, his body trembling in his eagerness to fight. As the boy continued to talk to him, and no answering challenge came from beyond, the stallion quieted. Finally he turned again to the mares, and a few moments later he left to join them.

McGregor stood alone in the darkness, pondering the things he had to do. There was feed in the saddlebags for his horse, and biscuits left over from noontime for himself. It would do him until tomorrow.

Tomorrow? What about tomorrow? He must return to the ranch. He must tell Allen that he had found
no sign of the stallion and his band
. Somehow he would return to the canyon, for here was his past. From the
black stallion he would learn all he wanted to know.
But he needed time
.

He went up the canyon to unsaddle his horse and to feed and water him. Later he returned to where he had left the stallion and started a fire. Sitting beside it, he ate the hard biscuits and waited impatiently for the hours to pass. Perhaps as early as tomorrow the door to his memory would begin to swing open for him, allowing light to penetrate the mystery of his past.

During the night he slept only for minutes and at long intervals. The stallion visited him often, his gigantic form silhouetted against the walls by the light of the small campfire. The boy never tired of feasting his eyes upon him. And when he could not see him, he heard the soft rhythmical beat of his hoofs. Through it all, he felt the great love he had for this horse. He could not sleep, knowing that the very nearness of the stallion stimulated an emotion that was strongly linked to his past.
Soon
, he thought,
it’ll bring back everything I want to know
.

Dawn came to the canyon with a wan grayness, and the movements of the band were vague and shadowy. McGregor waited for the black stallion to come. When he saw him, he felt uplifted with sheer joy and love. Through the pale path of light the stallion loped so beautifully that he seemed almost unreal.

McGregor had intended to look upon him just once more, and then leave the canyon. But he found he could not go. This feeling he had for the stallion was too stimulating. Would it not soon stimulate his very brain? And would he not, because of it, know everything about himself, his whole past, within
minutes?

Sobs came from his lips when the stallion stopped before him. He threw his arms about the horse’s neck and waited for the elusive mental awakening to come. But nothing came. Screams suddenly took the place of his sobs. He was desperate. He refused to listen, even to hear the inner voice that kept repeating, “
Wait … wait.
” He knew no patience, only terrible frustration and fury at being repelled again.

He never could have told how he got on the stallion’s back. He knew only that he was riding as he had ridden this great horse so often before. He burrowed into the heavy mane as if to hide from a world that would not accept him. He lay low on the stallion’s back, urging him to run even faster. Here he belonged, this much no one could take from him! He let the stallion split the band of mares in two frightened groups, let him scream and whirl, bending with him while he turned and leveled out again. His own shouts echoed the stallion’s whistle. The band dropped behind them.

He rode lower and faster, up and down the canyon. The stallion kept running because he loved to run, scattering and chasing the mares in his great excitement. Finally, McGregor took him through the pass that led to the distant mesas and endless canyons.

He rode for hours, and the sun was high when he brought the stallion back through the pass and into the canyon. He was tense, glowing and excited. His blood was as heated as the stallion’s. He knew so much and so little. This horse was a part of him, and he a part of this horse. They were one, yet he did not know why this was so. He did not know the stallion’s name or his own. Where had they come from? Where had he
ridden him as he had today … so many times, so long ago? Who was he? Who was the stallion?

His head was splitting. All the excitement, the hard riding had brought back the pain again. He slipped off the stallion, and put his hands to his head.

A deep depression swept over him. He knew he was not yet well, that all he could do was to wait and wait. In time the headaches would cease. In time he would remember everything.

He rubbed the stallion’s nose and told him to go back to his mares, that he would return soon, and that the horse should wait for him. He stayed there, watching the stallion, until the gigantic horse had reached the mares. Then he turned and walked up the canyon. He knew it would be late in the day before he reached the ranch, and already he was a night overdue. His steps came faster and with them a growing, gnawing fear that his long hours of riding might have put the stallion and himself in danger of being found in the canyon. What if Allen and his men had set out early this morning or even last night to look for him? Might they not find his tracks and those of the stallion on the crest of the upper range?

He burst into a run when he neared his saddled horse. They must not find him or his stallion! They must leave them alone. He needed time, more time!

With frantic fingers he untied the horse. He had his foot lifted to the stirrup when he saw the riders coming down the canyon. A long line of men, they were led by Allen astride his dark bay, Hot Feet.

He mounted and rode toward them, his jaw working. He told himself that he could stop them. They were looking only for him, and now that they had found him they would return to the ranch. But as he neared the line of men he realized how wrong he was.

He saw more than Allen’s grim face, concerned as it had been the day before for the safety of his mares. He saw more than the puzzled and trail-wearied eyes of Mike and Joe. For with them rode the hunters, men hardened by long years spent in the saddle, and their sun-blackened faces were still, disclosing nothing. But their eyes gave them away. To a man their eyes blazed with the excitement of the chase. He knew these men had found the stallion’s hoofprints.

McGregor’s gaze remained on Hank Larom, the ranch foreman. Here was a man, a good man, whose deep-set eyes shone blacker and brighter than any of the others. Looking into their great depths, McGregor believed everything he’d been told about him. It was
said he had run so many wild mustangs through the uplands that he thought like one. Larom, more than any of the others, was a man to be feared. Larom knew the horse trails, the water holes, the gaps and canyons. He knew how to drive a band of wild horses, and to turn them into any one of a number of traps he had set. He had been a wild-horse hunter not for profit and sale, but for the thrill of the chase.

Allen said, “Where is he, McGregor?”

The boy tore his eyes from Hank Larom. He looked at Allen, and answered, “He’s gone. He and the mares have left the country.”

Perhaps, if only Mike and Joe had been with Allen, McGregor would have been believed. But Hank Larom was there.

“We started out last night, when you didn’t get back,” Allen said. “We knew you’d found something.”

Larom’s eyes had left McGregor. He was looking down the canyon.
He knew
. The horse he rode was one the boy had never seen before. A buckskin, tough, lean and wiry. This was no quarter horse bred by man, handled by man since the day he’d been foaled. No, this horse had been a wild mustang.

Larom’s gaze swept back, found McGregor looking at his horse, and said, “Spooky is a broke wild horse, Mac. He ain’t agreein’ with you at all that the stud’s gone. Nope, it ain’t so, he’s tellin’ me.”

The buckskin was snorting. He had his ears far forward and his eyes were turned down the canyon.

Larom’s long jaw swung out as he added, “No better way of knowin’ what’s around you than by ridin a broke wild horse. Somehow they know plenty without
seein’ anything or catchin’ a scent. It ain’t natural, but that’s the way it is. Ain’t it so, Spooky?” He patted the neck of his bucksin. “
Now let’s see what’s up ahead.
”

The men pulled quickly out of line. The boy tried to stop them, but Allen had hold of his horse. “Why’d you do it, Mac? What reason did you have for lying to me?” Allen kept him with Mike and Joe while the hunters moved away.

McGregor said nothing. He could
do
nothing except follow them with his eyes. He had told his stallion to wait for him in the canyon, and had made it easy for them. Never had a better horse-trap been prepared by Larom than the one he, McGregor, had set unwittingly for his stallion.

He slid down from the saddle, and began walking after them. A minute later Allen rode beside him. “Kid, what’s come over you?” he asked. But the boy kept quiet, his eyes never leaving the mounted riders beyond. He saw them stop a short distance from the twist in the canyon, draw together and listen to Larom’s orders. Soon they were moving again. He saw the last man in line disappear around the bend. Suddenly the canyon walls vibrated with the stallion’s whistle!

He ran, Allen’s horse moving beside him, and then he stopped. Just ahead the hunters sat their horses across the canyon floor, closing this path of escape to the stallion. Far on the right were Hank Larom and two more men, sitting astride their mounts before the entrance to the pass, closing that means of escape, too.

It was easy, so easy. The trap had been sprung. The stallion and his band were only a short distance down the canyon. The mares were bunched, their
heads together. The black stallion stood alone, just in front of his band. His head was held high, and turning constantly; he nickered to his mares. He must have realized they had no chance to scatter and break through the line of men.

The boy went to Larom. He heard the ranch foreman call to the man next to him, “Russ, look’ut that stud horse. You never before seen anything like him!” Larom’s face was intensely eager. “He’s somethin’ I’ve seen in dreams, but never real, not in the forty years I’ve been huntin’. He’s a perfect horse, a
great
horse … an’ he’s smart, Russ. He knows we got him trapped, but he’s smart and waitin’ to break through. He’s waitin’ there for us to come and get him.”

Russ didn’t say anything for a minute, and then, “We won’t be able to get near him, Hank, not on what we’re ridin’. Even your buckskin is scared to death of him. He’ll never go near that hoss. He’s too smart for that!”

What he said was true of all the horses in the barrier line. They were squealing in their terror of the black stallion.

Russ went on, “We got to cut him off from his band, Hank. The mares will be easy for us to handle, if we kin separate ’em.”

“It’s not the mares we want,” Larom said. “It’s
him
. An’ I ain’t never goin’ to quit until I git him. After him there ain’t no other horse for me in the world.”

“It’s goin’ to be like fightin’ a cougar with bare hands,” Russ said. “Like I said before, we ain’t gettin’ our horses up to him. He’d kill ’em sure, an’ they know it.”

“I’ll go up walkin’,” Larom said.

The other rider didn’t take his eyes off the stallion. “Then he’ll kill you, too, Hank. You know that as well as I do. I know he’s got a killer look in his eyes without even bein’ able to see it from here. I know it jus’ by the way he’s standin’ up there, an’ waitin’.”

“I ain’t goin’ to let him get away,” Larom said. “I ain’t, an’ that’s for sure.” For the first time he moved the rifle he carried.

The boy saw this movement and so did Allen, who said, “Hank, we take this stallion alive or not at all. I couldn’t get rid of him that way.”

Larom’s eyes didn’t leave the stallion. “Boss, I wasn’t goin’ to kill that stud. I guess I’d shoot myself before I done anything like that. I was jus’ thinkin’ I’d
crease
him, if I couldn’t git him any other way.”

The other rider turned to Allen. “By
creasin’
Hank means grazin’ a bullet along his neck. It would cut him down without hurtin’ him much. Hank’s one of the few men who can do it, boss. I’ve seen him.”

McGregor’s face twitched convulsively. He inched toward Larom’s rifle. No one was going to graze his horse with a bullet. How long ago had it been since Larom had hunted horses?
Years!
And his aim needed to be off only a fraction of an inch to
kill
.

Suddenly Larom said, “The stud’s comin’ down!”

Every man in the line was set, with one hand controlling his frightened mount and the other on his rifle, ready to fire into the air to terrorize the stallion into going back if he sought to break out of the canyon.

The stallion came closer, the beat of his hoofs swifter and louder. The men looked and looked,
following his every movement, each man longing to have him for his own. Yet in these brief moments all the hardened hunters except one gave him up as unattainable. Only Larom cherished this stallion so much that he would risk his life to capture him.

The horse came to a plunging stop a short distance away from them. He stood there watching them, his large eyes moving up and down the line of men until they found the boy. He nickered and pounded his hoofs into the earth. Every muscle of his body was clearly defined in the bright sun. His small head rocked and he tossed his mane and forelock vigorously. He nickered again, his eyes never leaving the boy.