A farmer, driving along a frozen road far to the south, came upon a huge dog that had obviously been in a furious battle. The dog backed against a wire fence and made ready to defend himself, but he was too starved and tired to resist strongly, or even to run. The farmer tossed a coat over his head, overpowered him, laid him in the wagon and carried him home and fastened him in a wire run.
For days, Brad lay on a comfortable bed of straw while his wounds healed. This was shelter as he had once known shelter. But the law of the wild was upon him and he would have nothing to do with men.
Daily, the farmer put food in the run and duly Brad retreated until the man was gone.
“Careful!” the farmer’s wife warned. “You know nothing about that dog!”
The farmer had heard of a Stauffer dog that had killed his master, but the farmer was not one to jump at conclusions and he had all of old Jed Fentress’ understanding for animals. This dog might fit the killer’s description, but the farmer did not think he was a killer.
“He’ll be all right.” The farmer held out his hand. A warning rumbled in Brad’s throat and he took it away. “Give him time. He’s not ready yet.”
It did not seem that Brad would ever be ready.
And then suddenly—as suddenly as he had gone back to the wild and hidden himself away—his memory stirred. The hair-trigger watchfulness, the sense of ever-present danger that was his legacy from dim ages, began to go out of his blood. What came back to him sharply was a memory of one man’s kindness.
The farmer brought food and filled Brad’s feeding dish. When he looked up, Brad was almost upon him. His body grew rigid.
But today no threat rumbled from the dog’s throat. The old law had come to him out of forgotten ages, but kindness had revived a newer law. His tail wagged gently as he laid his head on the farmer’s knee.
The Black Horse
The July sun was hot, and the mountain was high. Jed Hale brushed the perspiration from his forehead as he mounted over the top. The coil of rope that was wrapped around his middle started to chafe. Jed unwrapped it and threw it on the ground while he sat down to rest.
He chewed thoughtfully on a straw and gazed down the range of low hills that stretched as far as he could see. The big, saucerlike hoofmarks of the horse led down, but there was no particular hurry. The animal was not traveling fast. A man on foot, if he had two good legs, could see him as many times a day as he chose. But the black horse could not be caught. Jed had known that when he began.
After an hour, the boy rose to his feet and, at the limping hobble that was his fastest pace, started down the hill on the trail of his prey. If he could bring back with him, something that fifteen men, each mounted on a good saddle horse, had not been able to do, he would get five hundred dollars. Raglan would pay that much for the black.
Jed had seen the wild horse scatter Raglan’s men. After two days of constant chasing, they had finally run him into the stout log corral that they had built. The corral had been strong enough to hold any ordinary animal, but the black had crashed through it as though it had been matchwood when they tried to put a rope on him. The man on the wiry saddle pony, who had roped the horse as he ran, had barely escaped with his life. The pony had been dragged along for fifty yards, and would have been killed if the saddle girth had not broken. The black horse had rid himself of the rope in some fashion. It had not been on him when Jed caught up with him.
Jed’s crippled leg gave him trouble going downhill. He was glad when he passed the summits of the low hills and descended into the valley, where it was level. There was a stream in the valley. The boy drank, and ate his fill of the ripe raspberries that hung over the water. He had no money to buy supplies to bring along. But he needn’t starve. More than once he had lived off the country.
A mile down the valley, he found the black horse. It stood with its head in the shade of a tree, swishing the flies away with its tail. Noiselessly, Jed sank behind a patch of brush, and for four hours lost himself in staring.
It was the biggest and most magnificent horse Jed had ever seen. He knew horses. Son of an indifferent mother and a father who had vanished shortly after he was born, victim of paralysis in his childhood, he had spent all his life doing chores for Raglan and other stockmen in the hills. He had never earned more than ten dollars a month, but he had dreams and ambitions. If he could get only ten acres of land for himself, he would somehow or other procure a mare and make a living raising horses. That, for Jed, would be all he wanted of happiness.
The hill men said that nobody could capture that wild horse, nothing could tame it. Every man in the hills had tried. The black wasn’t fast. Three riders besides Raglan’s men had had their ropes on him. Two of them had had their lassos broken and the third had cut his rather than risk having his saddle horse dragged to death. Jed looked at the Manila rope that he had again looped about his waist and shook his head. It was the best and strongest rope to be had, but it would not hold this untamed creature. Still—Raglan offered five hundred dollars.
Dusk fell. The black horse moved lazily out of the shade of the tree, to begin cropping at the rich grass that grew along the creek. For another half-hour Jed watched him. When his pursuer was near the horse, he was not Jed Hale, crippled chore boy and roustabout. In some mysterious way, he borrowed from the animal’s boundless vitality. When the horse grazed too close to him, and there was danger of his being discovered, Jed slipped out of his hiding place and moved half a mile up the valley. There, under the side of a mossy log, he made his bed for the night.
With sunup, he rolled from under the log. He had slept well enough, and he was not tired, but even the summer nights were chilly in the hills. As briskly as he could, he set off down the valley to where he had last seen the horse.
The black was browsing peacefully in the center of the patch of wild grass that grew along the creek. For all the world, he might have been one of Raglan’s Percherons, grazing in his home pasture. But he was bigger than any Percheron that Raglan owned. There was another difference, too, a subtle one, not to be noticed by the casual eye. When grazing, the black raised his head at least once every minute to look about him. It was the mark of the wild thing that must be aware of danger; no tame horse did that.
For a quarter of an hour, Jed studied him from the shelter of some aspen trees. Then, as slowly as he could walk, he went into the little field where the horse grazed. As soon as he left the shelter of the trees, the horse stopped grazing and looked at him steadily. Jed’s pulse pounded, the veins in his temples throbbed. Men with years more experience than he had said the horse was bad—a natural killer.
Recklessly, Jed walked on. He came to within fifty feet of the horse. He made a nervous little start and trotted a few steps. Jed paused to make soothing noises with his mouth. The rope he had been carrying he threw to the ground. Two yards farther on, the horse stopped and swung his head to look at the crippled boy. Jed advanced another twenty feet.
The black swung about. There was no fear in him, but neither was there any viciousness. His ears tipped forward, not back. His eyes betrayed only a lively curiosity toward this creature that followed him so persistently.
In low tones that scarcely carried across the few feet that separated them, Jed talked to the horse. Still talking, he walked toward him. The black tossed his head in puzzled wonderment and made nervous little motions with his hoofs. Fifteen feet separated the pair, then ten feet. The horse shone like a mountain of muscle and strength. With a sudden blasting snort, he wheeled and thundered down the valley. Jed sank to the ground. Perspiration covered his face. He had done what no other man in the hills had ever done. He had stood unarmed within striking distance of the horse. But this animal was not a killer. If he was Jed knew that he would not be alive now.
The boy took a fish line and hook from his pocket and picked some worms from the bottom of an overturned stone. He cut a willow pole with his sheath knife, and caught three trout from the stream. He built a fire and broiled
the fish over the flames. It was a fool’s mission that he was on. He should be back among the stockmen, earning the money that would provide him with food during the winter to come. Deliberately, he ate the trout. Then, getting to his feet, he put the fire out and struck off in the direction taken by the horse.
For another six days Jed followed the black about the low hills. He rested when the horse rested . . . and went on when the horse moved again. For the six days the animal stayed within a mile’s radius of the small meadow where Jed had tried to approach him. Then, on the seventh day, moved by some unaccountable impulse within his massive head, he struck across the low hills and did not stop at any of his customary grazing grounds. Patiently, Jed gathered up his coil of rope and followed. The horse had been foaled in Raglan’s back pasture, and had somehow been overlooked in the fall roundup.
They were, Jed guessed, traveling in a great circle and, within a month or six weeks, would come to Raglan’s pasture again. It was only at rare intervals that the black horse appeared at the pasture. His visits were alway unwelcome. Numberless times he had lured mares into the hills with him, and only with difficulty had they been recaptured.
All day Jed traveled without stopping. It marked the first day that he did not see the horse. He was a little fearful when he made his bed that night under a ledge of rocks, a dozen miles from where they had started. For two hours, he lay peering into the dark, unable to sleep. He did not own the horse—and could not catch him, and by spending his time following him was only making it certain that he would have to live all next winter on boiled corn meal, when he was lucky enough to get it.
Jed was up the next morning with the first streak of dawn and did not bother with a cooked meal. Some low-hanging Juneberries served him for a breakfast. He ate a few and picked a great handful to eat as he walked. Only when he was again on the trail of the horse did he feel at ease.
At twilight he found the black again. He was quietly grazing in the bottom of a low and rocky ravine. The boy lay on top of the ravine and watched him. He had never been in this country before, and did not like it. The valleys were not the gently sloping ones of the low hills he had just left. It was a place of rocks, of steep ravines and, oddly enough, swamps. The creeks here were slow and muddy—a good country to stay out of, he decided.
With night, Jed moved a quarter mile back from the lip of the ravine and built a fire. He supped on berries, but rabbit signs were plentiful. With his knife, he cut a yard from the end of his rope and unbraided it. Within a hundred yards of his fire he set a dozen snares, then curled on the ground beside the fire to sleep.
He awoke in the middle of the night. The air was cool. A high wind soared across the rocky ledge upon which he slept. Thunder rolled in the sky. The darkness was made fearfully alight by flashes of lightning. Jed picked up a fat pine knot that dripped sticky pitch and stirred the embers of his fire. He lighted the knot at the embers, and, with it blazing in his hands, he made the rounds of his snares. There were rabbits in two of them. Gathering them up, together with the unsprung snares, he made his way along the rocky ledge by the light of the pine torch.
Halfway around it, he came to the place he sought. Close to the wall of the cliff, a huge boulder lay across two smaller ones. The natural cave thus formed was full of wind-blown leaves. Placing the pair of rabbits on top of the rock, Jed crawled in among the leaves and, in a few seconds, was fast asleep.
The second time Jed awoke in a wet world. Torrential rain had fallen while he slept. The sluggish stream that he could see from his retreat flowed out of its banks. Every leaf on every tree dripped water. A light rain still fell. Jed shrugged and turned back to the cave. He built a fire in the dry leaves and fed it with wood that he split with his knife so it would burn. When both the rabbits were cooked and eaten, he wound the rope about him and set out to look for the wild horse.
The black was not in the same ravine where Jed had seen him last night. The boy glanced at the steep wall of the ravine, and at the swamp at its mouth. The animal could neither climb one nor cross the other. Jed walked along the edge of the ravine; descending into it when he did not have to would be both hard work and unnecessary. At the head of the ravine, where it ran onto the summit of the hill, he found the horse’s tracks. He followed them.
For five miles the black had evidently walked across the level top of the hill. Finally, through a cleft in its rocky side, he had gone down into another of the steep little ravines. There was a trail five feet wide where he had half-walked and half-slid down.
The rain had stopped, but a wind still blew. Jed stood at the top of the path where the horse had gone down and examined it critically. The walls of the ravine were forty feet high and steep. At the bottom, it was scarcely twenty feet across.
Jed worked his way along the rim of the ravine toward the mouth. He would descend into it ahead of the horse and chase him up the ravine to the safe travel on top.
Where the ravine led into the main valley there was another of the dismal swamps, a big one this time, fully a mile across, and it ran as far up and down the main valley as Jed was able to see. The black horse stood at the edge of the swamp pawing the soft ground anxiously with a front hoof. Jed watched as he galloped a few yards up the grassless floor of the ravine, then turned to test the swamp again.
For the first time since he had been following him, Jed saw the black worried. He peered anxiously about. Somewhere in the ravine was an enemy that he could not see. There were rattlesnakes and copperheads to be found in great numbers in just such places, but the wild horse was snake-wise, he could avoid these. Occasionally, a wandering cougar was known to cross the hills, and to take a colt or calf from the stockmen’s herds. That must be it. A big cougar might possibly be able to fasten itself on the horse’s back and to kill it with fangs and claws.
Ten feet below Jed a little ledge jutted out from the side of the ravine. He doubled his rope about a tree and slid down. It was excruciatingly painful work. For several seconds after he gained the ledge, he lay gasping for breath.
At a blasting neigh of terror from the horse, he crawled to the edge and looked over. Below him, the black stood with his head thrown erect, his nostrils flaring, and his eyes reflecting the terror they felt. Jed yanked the rope down to him and looped it over a rock. The horse was in danger. He had to get to him. A cougar would run from a man, even such a man as himself.
For fifteen painful feet Jed struggled down the face of the ravine. His crippled leg sent spasms of pain shooting over his entire body. Grimly he held on. Five more feet he descended. Then his body proved unequal to the task his mind had set it to do. He lost his hold on the rope and landed in a heap at the bottom of the ravine.
He sat up to look about. Ten feet in front of him, the black stood rigid, staring up the ravine.
Jed shook his head to clear it, and took his knife from its sheath. There was no time now for anything save finding and despatching whatever nameless terror beset the horse. He rose to his feet, by sheer will power putting strength into his legs. When he walked up the ravine, he passed so close to the black that he might have reached out and touched him if he had wanted to. The horse merely side-stepped a few paces and followed him with questioning eyes.
The cougar would now either attack or slink away. Walking slowly, searching every ledge with his eyes and missing nothing, Jed advanced. He could not see anything. But there was a sinister thing here that could be neither seen nor heard, only sensed. The air was growing more gushy; pebbles rattled into the ravine. Jed glanced anxiously back over his shoulder. If somehow he had missed the enemy and it had got behind him to attack the horse—But the black stood still; to all appearances he had not moved a muscle.
Suddenly, the silence was broken. The horse screamed, a long and chilling blast of fear. There came the pound of his hoofs as he fled back down the ravine. Jed heard him splashing into the swamp. Simultaneously, there sounded a deep-throated rumble from up the ravine, when a huge boulder loosed its hold on th
e canyon’s lip, to thunder down the side. It gathered others while it rolled. There was a staccato rattling as shale mingled with the avalanche.
Jed sheathed his knife. Within a minute, everything was over. A pall of shale dust hung in the ravine, but that was wafted away by its own weight. The avalanche, then, was the enemy. Animal instinct had told the horse that the wind would set the slide off. The ravine was now blocked by a wall of rock and shale to a third of its height. Great boulders, that the boy could never move were wedged in the shale. A man could get over it, but the black horse, never. With a shrug, Jed turned back to the swamp and to the horse.
The animal was a raving-mad thing. Ten feet from the rocky floor of the ravine, he struggled in the grip of the mud that was already up to his belly. His breath came in agonized gasps as he strove with all his mighty strength to free himself of the slimy hand of the swamp. Slowly, inexorably, he sank. As Jed watched, he flung himself four inches out of the slime, then fell back again, to sink deeper.
Jed walked into the swamp. It sucked at his bare feet—and sighed because it could not grip them. If he kept out of holes and stepped on grass tussocks wherever he could, he would not sink.
The black was fast in the grip of the mud when Jed reached his side. He could not move a leg, but still tossed his head wildly. A sublime sense of elation gripped the boy when he first laid a hand on the horse’s back. He had, he felt, at last known a full moment in his life.
“Easy, old boy,” he crooned. “Take it easy.”
The black swung his head about and knocked him sprawling in the mud. Coolly, Jed picked himself up to walk back to the mired animal. Kneeling by the horse’s shoulder, he ran his hand slowly up its neck.
“Don’t be worried, horse,” he pleaded. “Don’t fight so, old fellow. I’ll get you out.”
Two Dogs and a Horse Page 2