by Zane Grey
“Yes, Roseta. I’ll resign,” he replied with boyish, eager shyness. “I’ve some money . . . enough to buy a ranch.”
“Far from the border?” she entreated, as if thrilled.
“Yes, far. I know just the valley . . . ‘way north, under the Llano Estacado. . . . But, Roseta, I shall have to pack a gun . . . till I’m forgotten.”
“Very well, I’ll not be afraid . . . ‘way north,” she replied. Then her sweet gravity changed. “We will punish Father, Vaughn, we’ll elope right now! We’ll cross the river . . . get married . . . and drive out home to breakfast. . . . How Dad will rave! But he would have me elope, though he’d never guess I’d choose a ranger.”
Vaughn swung her up on Star, and leaned close to peer up at her, to find one last assurance of the joy that had befallen him. He was not conscious of asking what she bent her head to bestow upon his lips.
Lightning
REWARD
$500 WILL BE PAID FOR
THE DEATH OF LIGHTNING,
LEADER OF THE SEVIER RANGE
OF WILD HORSES.
UTAH CATTLE COMPANY
This notice, with a letter coming by stage and messenger to the Stewarts, brightened what had been a dull prospect. Seldom did a whole year’s work, capturing and corralling mustangs in the cañons and on the plateaus, pay them half as much as the reward offered for this one stallion. The last season had been a failure altogether. A string of pintos and mustangs, representing months of hazardous toil, had climbed out of a cañon corral and escaped to their old haunts. So on the strength of this opportunity the brothers packed and rode out of Fredonia across the Arizona line into Utah.
Two days took them beyond and above the Pink Cliffs to the White Sage plateau, and there the country became new to them. From time to time a solitary sheepherder, encountered with his flocks on a sage slope, set them in the right direction, and on the seventh day they reached Bain, the most southerly of the outposts of the big Utah ranches. It consisted of a water hole, a corral, a log cabin, and some range riders.
Lee and Cuth Stewart were tall, lean Mormons, as bronzed as the desert Navajos, cool, silent, gray-eyed, still-faced. Both wore crude homespun garments much the worse for wear; boots that long before had given the best in them; laced leather wristbands thin and shiny from contact with lassoes; and old gray slouch hats that would have disgraced cowboys.
But this threadbare effect did not apply to the rest of the outfit, which showed a care that must have been in proportion to its hard use. And the five beautiful mustangs, Bess in particular, proved that the Stewarts were Indians at the end of every day, for they certainly had camped where there was grass and water. The pack of hounds shared interest with the mustangs, and the leader, a great yellow, somber-eyed hound, Dash by name, could have made friends with everybody had he felt inclined.
“We calculated, boys,” held forth the foreman, “that if anybody could round up Lightnin’ and his bunch it’d be you. Every ranger between here an’ Marysvale has tried an’ failed. Lightnin’ is a rare cute stallion. He has more than hoss sense. For two years now no one has been in rifle shot of him, for the word has long since gone out to kill him.
“It’s funny to think how many rangers have tried to corral him, trap him, or run him down. He’s been a heap of trouble to all the ranchers. He goes right into a bunch of hosses, fights an’ kills the stallions, an’ leads off what he wants of the rest. His band is scattered all over, an’ no man can count ’em, but he’s got at least five hundred hosses off the ranges. An’ he’s got to be killed or there won’t be a safe grazin’ spot left in Sevier County.”
“How’re we to know this hoss’s trail when we do cross it?” asked Lee Stewart.
“You can’t miss it. His right foretrack has a notch that bites in clean every step he takes. One of my rangers came in yesterday an’ reported fresh sign of Lightnin’ at Cedar Springs, sixteen miles north along the red ridge up there. An’ he’s goin’ straight for his hidin’ place. Whenever he’s been hard chased, he hits it back up there an’ lays low for a while. It’s rough country, though I reckon it won’t be to you cañon fellers.”
“How about water?”
“Good chances for water beyond Cedar, I reckon, though I don’t know any springs. It’s rare an’ seldom any of us ever work up as far as Cedar. A scaly country up that way . . . black sage, an’ that’s all.”
The Stewarts reached Cedar Springs that afternoon. It was a hot place; a few cedars, struggling for existence, lifted dead twisted branches to the sun; a scant growth of grass greened the few shady spots; and a thin stream of water ran between glistening borders of alkali. A drove of mustangs had visited the spring since dawn and had obliterated all tracks made before.
While Cuth made camp, Lee rode up the ridge to get a look at the country. “We’re just on the edge of wild-hoss country,” he said to Cuth when he returned. “That stallion probably had a picked bunch an’ was drivin’ them higher up. It’s gettin’ hot these days, and the browse is witherin’. I see old deer sign on the ridge, an’ cougar, an’ coyote sign trailin’ after. They’re all makin’ fer higher up. I reckon we’ll find ’em all on Sevier plateau.”
“Did you see the plateau?” asked Cuth.
“Plain. Near a hundred miles away yet. Just a long flat ridge black with timber. Then there’s the two snow peaks, Terrill an’ Hilgard, pokin’ up their cold noses. I reckon the plateau rises off these ridges, an’ the Sevier River an’ the mountains are on the other side. So we’ll push on for the plateau. We might come up with Lightnin’ and his bunch.”
Sunset found them halting at a little water hole among a patch of cedars and boulders.
Cuth slipped the packs, and Lee measured out the oats for the mustangs. Then the brothers set about getting supper for themselves.
Cuth had the flour and water mixed to a nicety, and Lee had the Dutch oven on some red-hot coals when, moved by a common instinct, they stopped work and looked up.
The five mustangs were not munching their oats; their heads were up. Bess, the keenest of the quintet, moved restlessly and then took a few steps toward the opening in the cedars.
“Bess!” called Lee sternly. The mare stopped.
“She’s got a scent,” whispered Cuth, reaching for his rifle. “Mebbe it’s a cougar.”
“Mebbe, but I never knowed Bess to go lookin’ up one Hist! Look at Dash.”
The yellow hound had risen from among his pack and stood warily, shifting his nose. He sniffed the wind, turned around and around, and slowly stiffened with his head pointing up the ridge. The other hounds caught something—at least the manner of their leader—and became restless.
“Down, Dash, down,” said Lee, and then with a smile to Cuth: “Did you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“Listen!”
The warm breeze came down in puffs from the ridge; it rustled the cedars and blew fragrant whiffs of smoke into the hunters’ faces, and, presently, it bore a call, a low, prolonged call.
Cuth rose noiselessly to his feet and stood still. So horses, hounds, and men waited, listening. The sound broke the silence again, much clearer, a keen, sharp whistle. The third time it rang down from the summit of the ridge, splitting the air, strong, trenchant, the shrill, fiery call of a challenging stallion.
Bess reared an instant straight up and came down quivering.
“Look!” whispered Lee tensely.
On the summit of the bare ridge stood a noble horse clearly silhouetted against the purple and gold of sunset sky. He was an iron-gray, and he stood wild and proud, with long silver-white mane waving in the wind.
“Lightnin’!” exclaimed Cuth.
He stood there one moment, long enough to make a picture for the wild horse hunters that would never be forgotten; then he moved back along the ridge and disappeared. Other horses, blacks and bays, showed above the sage for a moment, and they, too, passed out of sight.
Before daylight the brothers were up, and at daw
n filed out of the cedar grove. The trained horses scarcely rattled a stone, and the hounds trotted ahead mindful of foxes and rabbits brushed out of the sage as they held back their chase.
The morning passed, and the afternoon waned. Green willows began to skirt the banks of a sandy wash, and the mustangs sniffed as if they smelled water. Presently the Stewarts entered a rocky corner refreshingly bright and green with grass, trees, and flowers, and pleasant with the murmur of bees and fall of water.
A heavily flowing spring gushed from under a cliff, dashed down over stones to form a pool, and ran out to seep away and lose itself in the sandy wash. Flocks of blackbirds chattered around the pool, and rabbits darted everywhere.
“It’d take a hull lot of chasin’ to drive a mustang from comin’ regular to that spring,” commented Cuth.
“Sure, it’s a likely place, an’ we can make a corral here in short order.”
In a day’s hard work, they completed the corral. The pool was enclosed, except on the upper side where the water tumbled over a jumble of rocks, a place no horse could climb out, and on the lower side where they left the opening for the ponderous pine-log gate which would trap the mustangs once they had entered the corral.
At nightfall they were ready and waiting for their quarry. At midnight the breeze failed, and a dead stillness set in. It was not broken until the afterpart of the night and then, suddenly, by the shrill, piercing neigh of a mustang. The Stewarts raised themselves sharply and looked at each other thoughtfully in the dark.
“Did you hear that?” asked Lee.
“I just did. Sounded like Bess.”
“It was Bess . . . darn her black hide. She never did that before.”
“Mebbe she’s winded Lightnin’.”
“Mebbe. But she ain’t hobbled, an’, if she’d whistle like thet for him, she’s liable to make off after him. Now, what to do?”
“It’s too late. I warned you before. We can’t spoil what may be a chance to get the stallion. Let Bess alone. Many’s the time she’s had a chance to make off an’ didn’t do it. Let’s wait.”
“Reckon it’s all we can do now. If she called thet stallion, it proves one thing . . . we can’t never break a wild mare perfectly. The wild spirit may sleep in her blood, mebbe for years, but sometime it’ll answer to. . . .”
“Shut up . . . listen!” interrupted Cuth.
From far up on the ridge came down the faint rattling of stones.
“Mustangs . . . an’ they’re comin’ down,” said Lee.
“I see ’em,” whispered Cuth.
It was an anxious moment, for the mustangs had to pass hunters and hounds before entering the gate. A black bobbing line wound out of the cedars. Then the starlight showed the line to be the mustangs marching in single file. They passed with drooping heads, hurrying a little toward the last, and unsuspiciously entered the corral gate.
“Twenty-odd,” whispered Lee, “but all blacks an’ bays. The leader wasn’t in that bunch. Mebbe it wasn’t his. . . .”
Among the cedars rose the peculiar halting thump of hobbled horses trying to cover ground, and following that snorts and crashings of brush and the pound of plunging hoofs. Then out of the cedars moved two shadows, the first a great gray horse with snowy mane, the second a small, graceful, shiny black mustang.
Lightning and Bess!
The stallion, in the fulfillment of a conquest such as had made him famous on the wild ranges, was magnificent in action and mien. Wheeling about her, whinnying, cavorting, he arched his splendid neck and pushed his head against her. His importunity was that of a master.
Suddenly Bess snorted and whirled down the trail. Lightning whistled one short blast of anger or terror and thundered after the black. Bess was true to her desert blood at the last. They vanished in the gray shadow of the cedars, as a stream of frightened mustangs poured out of the corral in a clattering roar.
Gradually the dust settled. Cuth looked at Lee, and Lee looked at Cuth. For a while neither spoke. Cuth generously forbore saying: “I told you so.” The failure of their plan was only an incident of horse wrangling and in no wise discomfited them. But Lee was angry at his favorite.
“You was right, Cuth,” he said. “That mare played us at the finish. Ketched when she was a yearling, broke the best of any mustang we ever had, trained with us for five years, an’ helped down many a stallion . . . an’ she runs off wild with that big, white-maned brute!”
“Well, they make a team, an’ they’ll stick,” replied Cuth. “An’ so’ll we stick, if we have to chase them to the Great Salt Basin.”
Next morning, when the sun tipped the ridge rosy red, Lee put the big yellow hound on the notched track of the stallion, and the long trail began. At noon the hunters saw him heading his blacks across a rising plain, the first step of the mighty plateau stretching to the northward.
As they climbed, grass and water became more frequent along the trail. For the most part Lee kept on the tracks of the mustang leader without the aid of the hound; Dash was used in the grass and on the scaly ridges where the trail was hard to find.
The succeeding morning Cuth spied Lightning watching them from a high point. Another day found them on top of the plateau, among the huge brown pine trees and patches of snow and clumps of aspen. It took two days to cross the plateau—sixty miles. Lightning did not go down, but doubled on his trail. Rimming a plateau was familiar work for the hunters, and twice they came within sight of the leader and his band.
Sometimes for hours the hunters had him in sight, and always beside him was the little black they knew to be Bess. There was no mistaking her.
There came a day when Lightning cut out all of his band except Bess, and they went on alone. They made a spurt and lost the trailers from sight for two days. Then Bess dropped a shoe, and the pursuers came up.
As she grew lamer and lamer, the stallion showed his mettle. He did not quit her, but seemed to grow more cunning as pursuit closed in on them, choosing the open places where he could see far and, browsing along, covering rods where formerly he had covered miles.
One day the trail disappeared on stony ground, and there Dash came in for his share. Behind them the Stewarts climbed a very high round-topped mesa, buttressed and rimmed by cracked cliffs.
It was almost insurmountable. They reached the summit by a narrow watercourse to find a wild and lonesome level rimmed by crags and gray walls. There were cedars and fine thin grass growing on the plateau.
“Corralled!” said Lee laconically, as his keen eye swept the surroundings. “He’s never been here before, an’ there’s no way off this mesa except by the back trail, which we’ll close.”
After fencing the split in the wall, the brothers separated and rode around the rim of the mesa. Lightning had reached the end of his trail; he was caught in a trap.
Lee saw him flying like a gleam through the cedars and suddenly came upon Bess, limping painfully along. He galloped up, roped her, and led her, a tired and crippled mustang, back to the place selected for camp.
“Played out, eh?” said Cuth, as he smoothed the dusty neck. “Well, Bess, you can rest up an’ help us ketch the stallion. There’s good grazin’ here, an’ we can go down for water.”
For their operations the hunters chose the highest part of the mesa, a level cedar forest. Opposite a rampart of the cliff wall they cut a curved line of cedars, dropping them close together to form a dense, impassable fence. This enclosed a good space free from trees. From the narrowest point, some twenty yards wide, they cut another line of cedars running diagonally back a mile into the center of the mesa. What with this labor and going down every day to take the mustangs to water, nearly a week elapsed.
“It’d be somethin’ to find out how long thet stallion could go without waterin’,” said Lee. “But we’ll make his tongue hang out tomorrow! An’ just for spite we’ll break him with black Bess.”
Daylight came cool and misty; the veils unrolled in the valleys; the purple curtains of the mountains lifte
d to the snow peaks and became clouds; and then the red sun burned out of the east.
“If he runs this way,” said Lee, as he mounted black Bess, “drive him back. Don’t let him in the corral till he’s plumb tired and worn out.”
The mesa sloped slightly eastward, and the cedar forest soon gave place to sage and juniper. At the extreme eastern point of the mesa Lee jumped Lightning out of a clump of bushes. A race ensued for half the length of the sage flat, then the stallion made into the cedars and disappeared.
Lee slowed down, trotting up the easy slope, and cut across somewhat to the right. Not long afterward he heard Cuth yelling, and saw Lightning tearing through the scrub. Lee went on to the point where he had left Cuth and waited.
Soon the pound of hoofs thudded through the forest, coming nearer and nearer. Lightning appeared straight ahead, running easily. At sight of Lee and the black mare he snorted viciously and, veering to the left, took to the open.
Lee watched him with sheer admiration. He had a beautiful stride and ran seemingly without effort. Then Cuth galloped up and reined in a spent and foam-flecked mustang.
“That stallion can ran some,” was his tribute.
“He sure can. Change hosses now an’ be ready to fall in line when I chase him back.”
With that Lee coursed away and soon crossed the trail of Lightning and followed it at a sharp trot, threading in and out of the aisles and glades of the forest. He passed through to the rim and circled half the mesa before he saw the stallion again. Lightning stood on a ridge, looking backward. When the hunter yelled, the stallion leaped as if he had been shot and plunged down the ridge.
Lee headed to cut him off from the cedars, but he forged to the front, gained the cedar level, and twinkled in and out of the clump of trees. Again Lee slowed down to save his mustang.
Bess was warming up, and Lee wanted to see what she could do at close range. Keeping within sight of Lightning, the hunter chased him leisurely around and around the forest, up and down the sage slopes, along the walls, at last to get him headed for the only open stretch on the mesa. Lee rode across a hollow and came out on the level only a few rods behind him.