"Yes, suh. What about these wild ones—they worth huntin'?"
"They're mixed; some are scrubs, inbred, poor stuff. But[pg 065] a few fine ones turn up. Mostly when they do they're strays or bred from strays—escaped from horse thieves or Indians. If the mustangers here pick up any branded ones, they're returned to the owners, if possible, or sold at a yearly auction. By the old Mexican law the hunting season for horses runs from October to March. Foals are old enough then to be branded. Speaking of foals, you left your mare and the filly in town?"
"Kells'll give them stable room till next month. I can bring them out then."
"We'll have a delivery of remounts to make to the camp about then. You can help haze those in and pick up your own stock on return."
León appeared in the doorway. "Don Cazar, the mesteneoes—they arrive."
"Good. These people are the real wild-horse experts, Kirby. Not much the Trinfans don't know about horses." Don Cazar was already on his way to the door and Drew fell in behind Bartolomé.
The Trinfan outfit was small, considering the job they intended, Drew thought. A cart pulled by two mules, lightly made and packed high, was the nucleus of their small caravan. Burros—two of them—were roped behind and, to Drew's surprise, a cow, bawling fretfully and intended, he later learned, to play foster mother to any unweaned foals which might be picked up. The cart was driven by a Mexican in leather breeches and jacket over a red shirt. Behind him rode the boy and girl Drew had seen in the Tubacca alley, mounted on rangy, nervous horses that had speed in every line of their under-fleshed bodies. Each rider trailed four spare mounts roped nose to tail.
"Buenos días, Don Cazar." For so small a man the Mexican[pg 066] on the cart seat produced a trumpet-sized voice. He touched the roll-edged brim of his sombrero, and Drew noted that his arm was crooked as if in the past it had been broken and poorly set.
"Buenos dias, Señor Trinfan. This house is yours." Rennie went to the side of the cart. "The west corral is ready for your use as always. Draw on the stores for any need you may have—"
"Gracias, Don Cazar." It was the thanks of equal to equal. "You have some late news of the wild ones?"
"Only that the pinto still runs near the well."
"That spotted one—sí, he is an Apache for cunning, for deviltry of spirit. It may be that this time he will not be the lucky one. There is in him a demon. Did I not see him, with my own eyes, kill a foal, tear flesh from the flanks of its dam when she tried to drop out of the run? Sí—a real diablo, that one!"
"Get rid of him one way or another, Trinfan. He is a danger to the Range. He killed another stud this season. I am as sure of that as if I had seen him in action."
"Ah, the blue one you thought might be a runner to match Oro. Sí, that was a great pity, Don Cazar. Well, we shall try, we shall try this time to put that diablo under!"
An hour later Drew was facing a diablo of his own, with far less confidence than Hilario Trinfan had voiced. Just how stupid could one be? Around him now were men trained from early childhood to this life, and he could show no skill at their employment. All the way out from Texas he had practiced doggedly with the lariat, and his best fell far short of what a range-bred child could do.
Yet he had an audience waiting down at the corral. Drew's mouth was a straight line. He would soon confirm[pg 067] their belief that Don Cazar had in truth hired Shiloh instead of his owner. But there was no use trying to duck the ordeal, and the Kentuckian had never been one to put off the inevitable with a pallid hope that something would turn up to save him.
Only this time, apparently, fortune was going to favor him.
"Which one you wish, señor?" Teodoro Trinfan, rope in hand, stood there ready to cast for one of the milling colts. Why the boy was making that offer of assistance Drew had no inkling. But to accept would give him a slight chance to prove he could do part of the work.
He had already made his selection in the corral, though he had despaired of ever getting that animal at rope's end.
"The black—"
* * *
[pg 068]
6
He worked in the dust of the smaller corral, with Croaker's help, adapting his knowledge of eastern gentling the way he had mentally planned it during the days since he had accepted the job. With the excited and frightened colt roped to the steady mule Drew tried to think horse, feel horse, even be horse, shutting out all the rest of the world just as he had on the day of the race. He must sense the colt's terror of the rope, his horror of the strange human smell—the man odor which was so frightening that a blanket hung up at a water hole could keep wild horses away from the liquid they craved.
Drew talked as he had to Shiloh, as if this black could understand every word. He twitched the lead rope, and Croaker paced sedately about in a wide circle, dragging the colt with him. Drew then reached across the bony back of the mule, pressed his hand up and down the sweaty, shivering hide of the black. No hurry, must not rush the steady, mild gesture to the horse that here was a friend.
The Kentuckian had no idea of the passing of time; it was all part of the knowledge that slow movements, not swift ones, would prevent new panic. The blanket was[pg 069] shown, allowing the black to sniff down its surface, before it was flapped back and forth across the colt's back, and finally left there. Now the saddle. And with that cinched into place, the black stood quietly beside Croaker.
Drew mounted the mule and rode. The saddled black, loosened from the twin tie, followed the mule twice around the corral. The rider dismounted from Croaker, was up on the black. For perilous seconds he felt flesh and muscles tense under his weight; then the body relaxed.
His hand went up. "Open the gate!" he called softly.
Seeming to realize he was free of the pole walls, the black exploded in a burst of speed which was close to Shiloh's racing spurt. Drew let him go. Three-quarters of an hour later he rode back, the black blowing foam, but answering the rein.
He found Don Cazar, Bartolomé, and Hilario Trinfan waiting for him by the corral. The mustanger walked forward with a lurch, his head thrown far back so he could look up at Drew from under the wide brim of his sombrero.
"This you could not do with a true wild one," he commented.
"I know that, señor. This colt was not an enemy, one who has already been hunted by man. He was only afraid...."
"But you have the gift. It is born in one—the gift. A man has it, and the horse always knows, answers to it. Ride with me, señor, and try that gift on the wild ones!"
"Someday—" That was true. Someday Drew did want to ride after the wild ones. Anse's stories of horse hunting on the Texas plains had first stirred that desire. Now it was fully awake in him.[pg 070]
Don Cazar inspected the black closely. "Well, Bartolomé, what have you to say now?"
"Señor Kirby knows his business," the Mexican admitted. "Though I think also that this was no true wild one. He will make a good remount, but he is no fighter such as others I have seen here."
Drew unsaddled and left the black in with Croaker; he fed both animals a bait of oats. In the morning he would be at this again. And he still had not solved the problem of roping. He could not expect Teodoro to come to his aid a second time. He started slowly back to the bunkhouse.
"Señor—?"
Drew raised his wet head from the bunkhouse basin and reached out for a sacking towel. "Yes?"
León sat on a near-by bunk. "I have thought of something—"
"Sounds as if it might be important," Drew commented.
"Don Cazar, he has offered money—a hundred dollars in gold—to have off the Range that killer pinto stud. But that one, he is like the Apache; he is not to be caught."
"Can't someone pick him off with a rifle?"
"Perhaps. Only that has also been tried several times, señor. My father, he thought he had killed him only two months ago. But the very next week did not the pinto come to steal mares from the bay manada? It must have been that he was only creased. No, he is
a diablo, and he hides in the rocks where he cannot easily be seen. But there is a plan I have thought of—" León hesitated, and Drew guessed he was about to make a suggestion which he believed might meet with disapproval.
"And this plan of yours?" Why had León come to him[pg 071] with it? Surely young Rivas had better and closer friends at the Stronghold. Why approach a newcomer?
"That pinto—he is a fighter; he likes to fight. He will not allow another stud on the ground he claims."
Drew was beginning to understand. Wild ones were sometimes trapped by a belled mare staked out to draw them in. But a stud to catch a fighting stud was another plan altogether.
"You would offer him a fight?"
"Sí, but not a real fight. Just allow him to believe that there would be one. Pull him so out of hiding in the rocks—"
"Using what stud for bait?"
"Señor Juanito—he said a stud that would fight too, like Shiloh."
"Shiloh!" Drew wadded the towel in his fist and pitched it across the room. "Shiloh!"
León must have read something of Drew's blazing anger in his face, for the Mexican's mouth went a little slack and his hand came up in an involuntary gesture as if to ward off a blow.
"It is a good plan!" His boy's voice was thin in protest against Drew's expression.
"It is a harebrained, dangerous scheme," began Drew; then he switched to a question. "Did Johnny Shannon suggest using Shiloh for bait, or was that your idea?"
"Señor Juanito—he said one must have a good horse, a fighter. But such a horse would not be hurt. We would wait with rifles and shoot the pinto quickly before he attacked. There would be no harm to Shiloh, none at all. Señor Juanito said that. Only a trick to get the diablo where we could shoot. Maybe—" Leon's eyes dropped, a flush rose[pg 072] slowly on his brown cheeks—"maybe it was very foolish. But when Señor Juanito told it, it sounded well."
"Did he tell you to ask me about it?"
The flush darkened. "He did not say so, señor. But one would not do such a thing without permission. Also, you should be one of the hunters, no? How else could we go?"
"Well, there won't be any huntin' of that kind, León. Trinfan knows what he's doin', and I don't think that pinto is goin' to be runnin' loose—or alive—much longer."
Drew pulled a clean shirt over his head. What kind of game was Johnny Shannon trying to play? Apparently he had almost talked León into using Shiloh as bait in this fool stunt. Had he expected the kid to take the horse without Drew's knowledge? Or for some reason had he wanted León to spill this? A trick to get Shiloh out of the Stronghold? But why?
He buckled on his gun belt, settled the twin holsters comfortably. Shannon—what and why, he repeated silently. Nothing sorted out in his mind. Drew only felt a prickle of uneasiness which began between his shoulder blades and ran a chill down his spine, as if rifle sights were on him.
But Shannon did not return to the Stronghold, and Drew was kept busy at the corrals from dawn to dusk. In a month of hard work it was easy to forget what might only be fancies.
There was an invigorating crispness in the air, and the dun gelding the Kentuckian rode savored the breeze as a desert dweller savors water. Drew was indulgent with his mount's skittishness as they pounded along at the tail of the horse herd bound for Tubacca.
From a rocky point well before them there was a flash of[pg 073] light. Jared Nye, on Drew's left, took off his hat and waved a wide-armed signal to answer Greyfeather's mirror. Two of the Pimas were scouting ahead on this two-day drive, and the Anglo riders were keeping the herd to a trot. Apaches, Kitchell, even bandidos from over the border, could be sniffing about the Range, eyeing its riches, ready to pick up anything left unprotected. The men rode with their rifles free of the boot, fastened by a loop of rawhide to the saddle horn, the old Texas precaution which allowed for instant action. And at each halt the six-shooter Colts' loading was checked.
Nye swerved, sending a lagger on with a sharp crack of quirt in the air. He pulled up to match Drew's sobered trot.
"That's the last bad stretch; now it'll be downhill an' green fields all th' way." Nye nodded at the narrow opening between two hills lying ahead. "Glad to get this band in on all four legs an' runnin' easy."
"You expected trouble?"
"Kid, in this here country you don't expect nothin' else but. Last time we brought hosses up th' trail they jumped us four, five miles back—right close to where we saw that pile of bones this mornin'. 'Fore he knew what hit us Jim Berry was face down an' never got up again. An' th' Old Man took him a crease 'crost th' ribs that made him bleed like a stuck pig. Got him patched up an' into town; then he keeled over when he tried to git down off his hoss an' was in bed a week."
"Apaches?"
"Naw, we figured it was Kitchell. Couldn't prove it though, an' after that th' Old Man made a rule we take Pimas every drive. Ain't nothin' able to surprise them. I[pg 074] never had no use for Injuns, but these here are peaceful cusses—iffen they don't smell an Apache. With them ridin' point we're sure slidin' th' groove. Me, I'll be glad to hit town. I'd shore like to keep th' barkeep busier than a beaver buildin' hisself a new dam. Though with th' Old Man off reppin' for th' law down along the border and needin' hands back on the Range, we swallows down th' dust nice an' easy an' takes it slow. Anyway, this far from payday I kin count up mosta m' roll without takin' it outta m' pocket."
"This Kitchell...think it's true that some of the ranchers are really helpin' him?"
"Don't know. Might be he's tryin' to play th' deuce against th' whole deck. Lessen he lives on th' kind of whisky as would make a rabbit up an' spit in a grizzly's eye hole, he's got somethin'—or someone—to back him. Me...were th' Old Man poundin' th' hills flat lookin' for me, I'd crawl th' nearest bronc an' make myself as scarce as a snake's two ears." Nye shrugged. "Kitchell's got some powerful reason for squattin' out in th' brush playin' cat-eyed with most of th' territory. Maybe so there're some as will sit in on his side, but they've sure got their jaws in a sling an' ain't bawlin' about it none. 'Course lotsa people were red-hot Rebs back in '61 till they saw as how white men fightin' each other jus' naturally gave th' Apaches an' some of th' border riffraff idears 'bout takin' over. But mosta us now ain't wavin' no flag. Iffen Kitchell has got him some diehards backin' him—" Nye shrugged again. "Git 'long there, you knock-kneed, goat-headed wagon-loafer!" He pushed on to haze another slacker.
They were dusty and dry when they dropped the corral gate in place and watched the horses mill around. Drew headed for Kells' stable. Shadow nickered a greeting and[pg 075] turned around as if to purposefully edge her daughter forward for his inspection.
"Pretty, ma'am," he told her. "Very pretty. She's goin' to be as fine a lady as her ma—I'm willin' to swear to that."
The filly lipped Drew's fingers experimentally and then snorted and did a frisky little dance with her tiny hoofs rustling in the straw. Kells had been as good as his promise, Drew noted. Mother and child had had expert attention, and Shadow's coat had been groomed to a glossy silk; her black mane and tail were rippling satin ribbons.
"Gonna take 'em back to th' Range with you, Mister Kirby?" Callie came down from the loft.
"Yes. I'll need a cart and driver though. We'll have to give the foal a lift. Know anyone for hire, Callie?"
"I'll ask around. Have any trouble comin' up?"
"No. Greyfeather and Runnin' Fox were scoutin' for us."
"Stage was jumped yesterday on th' Sonora road," Callie volunteered. "One men got him a bullet in th' shoulder, but they got away clean. It was Kitchell, th' driver thought. Captain Bayliss took out a patrol right away. You plannin' on goin' back with Kitchell out?"
"Don't know," Drew replied absently. Better leave that decision to Nye; he knew the country and the situation. "You ask about the cart, Callie, but don't make it definite. Have to see how things turn out."
Drew started for the Four Jacks to meet Nye. Back here in Tubacca he was conscious how much he had allowed his personal a
ffairs to drift from day to day. Of course he had seen very little of Hunt Rennie at the Stronghold; his father had ridden south on patrol with his own private posse shortly after his own arrival there. But whenever Drew thought seriously of the future he had that odd sense of[pg 076] dislocation and loss which he had first known on the night he had seen Don Cazar arrive at the cantina. Don Cazar—Hunt Rennie. Drew Kirby—Drew Rennie. A seesaw to make a man dizzy, or maybe the vertigo he felt was the product of too much sun, dust, and riding.
There was someone at a far table in the cantina, but otherwise the dusky room was empty. Drew went directly to the bar. "Got any coffee, Fowler?"
"Sure thing. Nye was in here 'bout five minutes ago. Said for you to wait here for him. You hear 'bout Kitchell holdin' up th' stage?"
"Callie told me. Said the army patrol went out after him."
"Yeah, don't mean they'll nail him though. He's as good as an Apache 'bout keepin' undercover. Here's your coffee. Want some grub, too?"
The smell of coffee revived Drew's hunger. "Sure could use some. Haven't eaten since we broke camp at sunup."
"Sing's in th' kitchen. I'll give him th' sign to rattle th' pans. Say—been racin' that Shiloh of yours lately? Sure am glad I played a hunch an' backed him against Oro." Fowler's red forelock bobbed over his high forehead as he nodded vigorously.
"No racin' on the Range."
"Hope you're keepin' him closer. That border crew'd sure like to git a rope on him! Down Sonora way one of them Mexes would dig right down to th' bottom of his money chest to buy a hoss like that. I'll go an' tell Sing."
Drew, coffee mug in hand, sat down at a table where some of the breeze beat in the door now and then. Lord, he was really tired. He stretched out his legs, and the sun made twinkly points of light on the rowels of the Mexican[pg 077] spurs. Sipping the coffee, he allowed himself the luxury of not doing any thinking at all.
Fowler brought a heaping plate and Drew began to eat.
"Oh, there you are!" Nye slammed in, swung one of the chairs about, and sat on it back to front, his arms folded across the back.
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