CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE
Too late to interfere in the struggle about to be enacted, the girlstood rigidly beside a great red pine tree, fixing her gaze upon Van,on whose heels, as he walked, jingled a glinting pair of spurs.
From the small corral he was leading forth as handsome an animal asBeth had ever seen, already saddled, bridled--and blindfolded. Thehorse was a chestnut, magnificently sculptured and muscled. He was ofmedium size, and as trim and hard as a nail. His coat fairly glistenedin the sun.
Despite his beauty there was something about him that betokened menace.It was not altogether that the men all stood away--all save Van--noryet that the need for a blindfold argued danger in his composition.There was something acutely disquieting in the backward folding of hisears, the quiver of his sinews, the reluctant manner of his stepping.
Beth did not and could not know that an "outlaw" is a horse so utterlyabandoned to ways of broncho crime and equine deviltry that no man isable to break him--that having conquered man after man, perhaps evenwith fatal results to his riders, he has become absolutely depraved andimpossible of submission. She only knew that her heart was beatingrapidly, painfully, that her breath came in gasps, that her wholenervous system was involved in some manner of anguish. She saw theChinese cook run past to witness the game, but all her faculties werefocused on the man and horse--both sinister, tense, and grim.
Van had not turned in Beth's direction. He was wholly unaware of herpresence. He halted when the horse was well out towards the center ofthe open, and the outlaw braced awkwardly, as if to receive an attack.
With the bridle reins held in his hand at the pommel of the saddle, Vanstood for a moment by the chestnut's side, then, with incrediblecelerity of movement, suddenly placed his foot in the stirrup and wasup and well seated before the blinded pony could have moved.
Nothing happened. No one made a sound. No one, apparently, save Beth,had expected anything to happen. She felt a rush of relief--that cameprematurely.
Van now leaned forward, as the horse remained stiffly braced, andslipping the blindfold from the pony's eyes, sat back in the saddlealertly.
Even then the chestnut did not move. He had gone through this ordealmany times before. He had often been mounted--but not for long at atime. He had even been exhausted by a stubborn "broncho buster"--somehardy human burr who could ride a crazy comet--but always he had won inthe end. In a word he had earned his sobriquet, which in broncho-landis never lightly bestowed.
Van was not in the least deceived. However, he was eager for theconflict to begin. He had no time to waste. He snatched off his hat,let out a wild, shrill yell, dug with his spurs and struck the animal aresounding slap on the flank, that, like a fulminate, suddenlydetonated the pent-up explosives in the beast.
He "lit into" bucking of astounding violence with the quickness ofdynamite.
It was terrific. For a moment Beth saw nothing but a mad grotesquerieof horse and man, almost ludicrously unnatural, and crazed witheccentric motion.
The horse shot up in the air like a loose, distorted piece of statuary,blown from its pedestal by some gigantic disturbance. He appeared tobuckle in his mid-air leap like a bended thing of metal, then droppedto the earth, stiff-legged as an iron image, to bound up again with madand furious gyrations that seemed to the girl to twist both horse andrider into one live mass of incongruity,
He struck like a ruin, falling from the sky, went up again withdemon-like activity, once more descended--once more hurtled wildlyaloft--and repeated this maneuver with a swiftness utterly bewildering.
Had some diabolical wind, together with a huge, volcanic force, takeninsane possession of the animal, to fire him skyward, whirl him about,thrash him down viciously and fling him up again, time after time, hecould not have churned with greater violence.
He never came down in the same place twice, but he always came downstiff-legged. The jolt was sickening. All about, in a narrow,earth-cut circle he bucked, beginning to grunt and warm to his work andhence to increase the deviltry and malice of his actions.
Van had yelled but that once. He saw nothing, knew nothing, save adizzy world, abruptly gone crazy about him.
To Beth it seemed as if the horror would never have an end. Oneglimpse she had of Van's white face, but nothing could it tell of hisstrength or the lack thereof. She felt she must look and look till hewas killed. There could be no other issue, she was sure. And forherself there could be no escape from the awful fascination of themerciless brute, inflicting this torture on the man.
It did end, however, rather unexpectedly--that particular phase of theconflict. The horse grew weary of the effort, made in vain, todislodge the stubborn torment on his back. He changed the program withthe deadliest of all a broncho's tricks.
Pausing for the briefest part of a second, while Van must certainlyhave been reeling with hideous motion and jolt, the chestnut quicklyreared on high, to drop himself clean over backwards. It was thus thatonce he had crushed the life from a rider.
"Oh!" screamed Both, and she sank beside the tree.
The men all yelled. They were furious and afraid.
With hoofs wildly flaying the air, while he loomed tall and unreal insuch an attitude, the broncho hung for a moment in mid-poise, thendropped over sheer--as if to be shattered into fragments.
But a mass of the bronze-like group was detached, and fell to one side,on its thigh. It was Van. He had seen what was coming in time.
Instantly up, as the brute rolled quickly to arise, he leaped in thesaddle, the horn of which had snapped, and he and the chestnut cameerect together, as if miraculously the equestrian group had beenrestored.
"Yi! Yi!" he yelled, like the madman he was--mad with the heat of thefight--and he dug in his spurs with vicious might.
Back to it wildly, with fury increased, the broncho leaped responsively.
Here, there, all the field over, the demon thrashed, catapultingincredibly. He tried new tricks, invented new volcanics of motion,developed new whirlwinds of violence.
Once more, then, as he had on the first occasion, the beast reared upand fell backward to the earth. Once more Van dropped away from hisbulk and caught him before he could rise. This time, however, he didnot immediately mount--and the men went running to his side.
"Fer God's sake, boy, let me kill the brute!" cried Gettysburg takingup a club.
"I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him! I'll shoot him!" said Napoleonwildly, but without any weapon in his hands.
Beth beheld and heard it all. She was once more standing rigidly byher tree, unable to move or speak. She wished to run to Van as the menhad run, but not to slay the broncho--only to beg the horseman not tomount again.
She saw him push the men away and stand like the broncho's guard. Hisface was streaked with blood--his blood--jolted alike from his mouthand nose by the shocks to which he had been subjected.
"Let the horse alone!" he commanded roughly. "Good stuff in thisbroncho--somewhere. Get me a bottle of water, right away--a bigone--get it full."
His partners started at once to raise objections. The Indian stood bystolidly looking on.
"You can't go no further. Van, you can't----" started Gettysburg.
"Sominagot! Una ma, hong oy! Una ca see fut!" said the Chinese-cook,swearing vehemently in the language likeliest to count, and he ran atonce towards the kitchen.
Van was replacing the blindfold on the broncho's eyes. The animal waspanting, sweating, quivering in every muscle. His ears went backwardand forward rapidly. The blindfold shut out a wild, unreasoningchallenge and defiance that burned like a torch in his eyes.
Algy came running with a big bottle, filled and corked.
"Fer God's sake, leave me kill him!" Gettysburg was repeatingautomatically. "Van, if you ain't got no respect fer yourself, ain'tyou got none left fer us old doggone cusses?"
"Give me the bottle, Algy," Van replied. "You're the only game sporton the ranch."
> Still he did not discover Beth. His attentions were engrossed by thehorse. He was dizzy, dazed, but a dogged master still of his forces.Up he mounted to the saddle again, the bottle held firmly in his grasp.
"Slip off the blinder," he said to his friends, and Algy it was whoobeyed.
"Damn you, now you buck!" cried Van wildly, and his heels ignited thevolcano.
For five solid minutes the broncho redoubled his scheme of demoniacfury. Then he poised, let out a shrill scream of challenge, andabruptly raised to repeat the backward fall.
Up, up he went, an ungainly sight, and then--the heavens split in twain.
He was only well lifted from the earth when, with a thunderous,terrible blow, Van crashed the bottle downward, fairly between hisears, and burst it on his skull.
The weapon was shattered with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glassand streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyesas if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could nothave been more horrible. An indescribable fright and awe overwhelmedthe brutish mind as with a cloud of lead.
Down swiftly he dropped to his proper position, perhaps with a fearthat his crown was gaping open from impact with the sky. He wasstunned by the blow upon his brain, and weakened in every fiber. Hestarted to run, in terror of the thing, and the being still solid inthe saddle. Wildly he went around the cove, in the panic of utterdefeat.
The men began to cheer, their voices choked and hoarse. Van rode nowas fate might ride the very devil. He spurred the horse to furious,exhausting speed, guiding him wildly around the mountain theater.Again and again they circled the grassy arena, till foam and latherwhitened the broncho's flank, chest, and mouth, and his nostril burnedred as living flame.
When at last the animal, weary and undone, would have sobered down to atrot or walk, Van forced him anew to crazy speed. At least five mileshe drove him thus, till the broncho's sides, like the rider's face,were red with blood mingled with sweat.
Beth, at the climax, had gone down suddenly, leaning against the tree.She had not fainted, but was far too weak to stand. Her eyes onlymoved. She watched the two, that seemed welded into one, go racingmadly against fatigue.
At last she beheld the look of the conquered--the utter surrender ofthe broken and subdued--gleam dully from the wilted pony's eyes. Shepitied the animal she had feared and hated but a few brief momentsbefore. She began to think that the man was perhaps the brute, afterall, to ride the exhausted creature thus without a sign of mercy.
She rose to her feet as the two came at last to a halt, master andservant, conquered and conqueror, man and quivering beast.
Then Van got down, and her heart, that had pitied the horse, welledwith deeper feeling for the rider. She had never in her life seen aface so drawn, so utterly haggard beneath a mask of red as thatpresented by the horseman.
Van nearly fell, but would not fall, and instead stood trembling, hisarm by natural inclination now circling the neck of the pony.
"Well, Suvy," he said not ungently, "we gave each other hell.Hereafter we're going to be friends."
Beth heard him. She also saw the chestnut turn and regard the man witha look of appeal and dumb questioning in his eyes that choked her--withjoy and compassion together. She someway knew that this man and horsewould be comrades while they lived.
Half an hour afterward as she, Van, and Elsa rode forward as before,she saw the man in affection pat the broncho on the neck. And thehorse pricked his ears in a newfound gladness in service and friendshipthat his nature could not yet comprehend.
The Furnace of Gold Page 6