by Paul Bagdon
“I guess that depends on whether or not you can sit your horse without falling off. Tomorrow I’ll take our packer in an’ load up on grub. Maybe the day after we can go out.”
Arm swung his legs back up on the couch and stretched out again. “Sí,” he said.
The next morning brought one of those blessed dry days with sun, blue sky, and not an awful lot of heat. Arm was sleeping when I went out to the barn and I left him alone. I strapped on the packer’s rig, saddled my horse, and rode to town. I picked up what I needed at the mercantile quickly, bought an extra sack of coffee and some tobacco and rolling papers, and wandered over to Tiny’s. He didn’t have much business; he was sitting on a bale of hay looking off at nothing I could see.
“Looks like Arm and me are goin’ out to see about that herd with the fantasmo horse,” I said.
“Figured you would. Thing is, from what I heard, you’ll have to kill him to bring him in. He’s a rank one, Jake.”
“I’ve handled rank ones before,” I said. “Hell, when I was breakin’ horses I rode some that came straight from hell.”
Tiny nodded but didn’t speak.
“Anyway,” I said, “I guess we’ll see.”
“Yep. How long you figure to be out?”
“I dunno. Until we find the herd an’ get a look at this stud, I guess.”
“Might take a while. I’ll keep a watch over your place while you’re gone.”
“ ’Preciate it, Tiny.”
There didn’t seem to be much of anything else to say, so I mounted up, took the packer’s lead rope, waved to Tiny, and rode on home to the ranch.
Arm was as feisty as a bucket of scorpions a couple days later when we figured he could travel all right. He always got this way for some reason when we were setting out on something big—and he was just as friendly as a mountain cat with a white-hot poker up its ass. He’d been out in the barn before light, working under the flickering light of ol’ man Ven Gelpwell’s ‘Sure Star’ lanterns.
“ ’Bout goddamn time,” he growled as I walked into the barn, building a smoke.
“Mornin’ to you, too, Arm.”
“You figure that packer’s gonna toss his rig on all by hisself?” Arm snarled.
I saddled my horse first, just to put another prickly pear under Arm. When he heard the glug and tinkle of a couple of bottles in my saddlebag, his face grew red with anger.”
“Madre de Jesús, this ain’t no barroom drinkin’ party, Jake. We go to fetch horses, no? An’ maybe a fantasmo horse what probably don’t even exist, case you forgot.”
I ignored Arm and we finished our preparations. I checked all twelve shoes for tightness. “Ready?” I asked.
Armando smiled for the first time that day. “Ready,” he said.
We rode in a roughly south-southeast direction. It was scarcely full light and the scents and sensations of the virgin dew sweet in the air made a man feel fresh and good. Our horses’ shoes clinked every so often on a rock, seeming to ring like a bell that’d carry all ’cross Texas.
The day heated up, but without the life-sapping fire of full summer. We were at the end of August according to the calendar in the mercantile, and the weather ’round here changed real quickly. September snow an’ ice storms weren’t terribly rare.
We camped early but neither of us was awful hungry. Thing is, we hit a little spring-fed watering hole an’ just couldn’t pass it and the few desert pines up. We ate jerky and drank coffee. About dark, Arm cleared his throat. “Uhh…that booze you brought along…”
I fetched the bottle and we each had a couple snorts.
“We will hit tracks maybe two days, maybe more,” Armando said. “A big herd like you say, even a Anglo could follow.”
I let that pass.
Mustangs tend to cover a lot of ground in their daily search for grass and water, but they tend to stay in pretty much the same areas. If we rode long enough, it was a pretty sure thing we’d come upon the horses or their tracks, and Arm and I both knew that, so there was no real hurry.
Arm’s horse picked up a shard of rock between his shoe and hoof in his left front and by midday began favoring it. I dug it out with my Barlow knife and we packed it with mud and the horse grunted in the way of thanks. We made camp right there to make sure the hoof was okay.
I walked out to scrounge up a meal. Armando won’t eat snake—some Mexican mumbo jumbo forbids it—and I passed by a couple of fat rattlers taking the sun on rocks. They’d have made a good stew and broiling pieces on sticks over a fire wouldn’t have been a bad meal, either.
There were plenty of jackrabbits around and I bagged a pair of fine ones, one shot apiece from a draw, which ain’t bad shootin’, if I do say so myself.
Arm had a fire going by the time I got back to our camp and I could smell the mesquite burning from a good distance off. One of the few benefits of being an aimless drifter or a cowpoke is that smell—it’s fresh and almost sweet and jacks up a man’s spirits every time.
We cooked the jacks about dusk and then settled back with a sip of booze, contented, full of stomach, enjoying the sunset.
“Soon, I theenk, we will come on them horses,” Arm said.
“We haven’t seen a single track or a solitary lump of horse apple, Arm. Could be a while yet.”
“Some theengs I jus’ know,” he said, ending that conversation. Arguing with Armando makes as much sense as arguing with a chicken.
“I’m wonderin’ how many we can drive,” I said. “They’re bound to be as wild as hawks— even the mares—an’ might not take to bein’ pushed in one direction.”
“We take the stud, his ladies’ll follow,” Arm said. A rope on either side an’ he got no choice, Jake—the sumbitch’ll either come or we’ll drag him along, no?”
“We’ll see, I guess.”
In the morning Arm’s horse was as fit as a four-month old colt. We lit out early.
We saw no tracks that day and the sun was flexing its end-of-summer muscles. We emptied our canteens into our hats for our horses early on. We hit some piss-poor water late in the day, but it was better than nothing, an’ was safe to drink— the tracks around the stingy little puddle proved that. No prairie or desert critter is going to drink water that’ll croak him. Somehow, they know what’s okay an’ what isn’t.
Jerky and foul water doesn’t make much of a meal, but we ate it anyway, figuring on taking another couple of jacks or prairie hens toward the end of the day.
It was too damned hot to ask our animals for any speed, so we plodded along, dripping sweat.
“Prolly last day of the year we sweat,” Arm said. “ ’Fore long, we be freezin’ our asses off. Makes a man wonder why anyone, they’d decide to live out here,” Arm said.
“Well, hell. Free grazin’, for one thing. Some of the valleys are the prettiest places on earth, an’ the soil ain’t ever been turned. It’ll grow anything. Plus,” I added, “it ain’t all jammed up with people like bankers an’ lawmen an’ churches an’ such.”
“Ees true. Hard men roamin’ about though, no? The crazies from after the war, them ones who hangs los negros, Quantrill an’ his gang, all them’re thicker’n fleas on a dog’s ass.”
“Maybe so. Sure, they’re out an’ around. But we ain’t seen much of them, an’ we’re tougher than they are. They hate Mexes, too—an’ how many you think it’d take to kill you, Arm?”
“Me? Sheet. One crazy maybe half a mile off with one of them Sharps, is all,” he answered cryptically.
We’d had enough by late afternoon. We came on a small oasis an’ hauled in for the night. There was some scruffy buffalo grass for the horses to gnaw at and a few desert pines and a rocky little pool maybe a couple of feet across and about that in depth of the sweetest water God ever made.
As we were settling in and gathering up some firewood, Armando pointed to the east. “Look,” he said.
I looked. There was a stringy, barely discernable line in the sky way beyond us.
“The herd,” I said. “It’s gotta be the herd.”
Chapter Three
There was no reason to hustle. Those horses weren’t going anywhere we couldn’t find or track them. It was possible, too, that the grit we saw raised was put in the air by another group of roaming mustangs—not the ones we were after. Nevertheless, we were like a pair of kids on the night before Christmas. It didn’t hurt that Arm had shot three prairie hens while he was gathering firewood, and they were all cleaned up and ready to be skewered on sticks over the fire.
Our final bottle of whiskey took a significant hit that night.
Neither of us mentioned that we may be chasing something that doesn’t exist—this fantasmo stallion—although that cruel little thought was tucked away in the backs of our minds. We’d know what was what as soon as we saw the herd, so there was no sense in worrying over it.
Our packer was loaded and we were in our saddles a tad before first light. The false dawn— that line of soft, almost pastel light that sneaks up over the horizon before the sun makes its appearance was enough for us to see by. Hell, either of us could saddle up in full dark if it was necessary and, in fact, we’d done so more than a couple of times.
The skimpy cloud in the sky told us the herd was still headed mostly east.
“Mus’ be valleys that way,” Arm said. “Them horses are already thinkin’ of winter, no?”
“Must be,” I agreed.
The day was a decent one for riding—hot but not stifling. We’d let our animals drink their fill and we topped off our canteens. Other than the water we carried, we were going to have to count on the mustangs to lead us to water during the day. If they went thirsty, so did we.
It’s difficult to gauge distance out there; the only landmarks we had were foothills that seemed way the hell ahead of us—maybe forty or fifty miles—so we did the only thing we could, which was to follow the brownish cloud raised by the herd.
About noon we rested our horses and gnawed at jerky, which had all the flavor of dogwood.
It was almost nightfall when we began seeing relatively fresh piles of droppings from the herd. “Bueno. We come closer,” Arm said, grinning. “Tomorrow we see them.”
We saw them the next afternoon.
There was a shallow valley with a ribbon of water snaking through it, and some sparse grass that was a whole lot better than nothing to a mustang herd. We were at the lip, maybe a hundred yards away. We dismounted and ground-tied our horses behind us a good bit to make us less visible. We had a perfect vantage point for observing the herd.
There were seventy-five or so mares, a bunch of which had foals at their sides. The entire herd was scrawny compared to how guys like me an’ Arm like to see horses. Many—most—were ribby, and many of the mares showed painful-looking reddish places about the size of a fist at the base of their tails, meaning they had parasites and that they’d rubbed their asses against trees or boulders or whatever they came across to alleviate the itching. The breeze was from them to us, which was greatly to our advantage.
The stallion was something else again. It’s probably fair to say that every saddlebum and cowhand knows a good horse when he sees one—just as my partner and I do. This horse was a rare one, a full sixteen hands tall and maybe a hair more, and his muscles were perfectly defined. His chest was wide and powerful. His head was classic, ears fairly small, muzzle as straight as the barrel of a .45, and his eyes placed perfectly. He was a blood bay and his coat looked like polished copper when the sun hit it right.
He was in motion all the time, his muzzle testing the air, his eyes never still, sweeping over his harem and offspring, moving his body to get a better view of whatever he was looking at.
That was the strange thing both Arm and I picked up on. The stallion seemed to shift his hind end to change positions rather than take the easy step with his front feet that would bring him around.
“He has injured leg,” Armando said. “Maybe bad hoof—maybe the bone, she is busted.”
“Still, he looks real good. If he ain’t purely crazy, he could maybe make a good stud horse for us,” I said. “Injuries don’t make any difference ’less he’d been born with them an’ passed them on to his get.”
“Ees true.” Arm waited a long moment. “Now what?”
“Hell, I dunno. This little valley isn’t a bad place to try to get ropes on the stud, but then we’re buying a pig in a poke. I think we should watch a couple three-three days, see how that boy handles himself.”
“What peeg? Ees no gordo. You talk funny sometimes, Jake.”
I sighed. “Forget it, okay? It’s jus’ something Americans say.”
“But, I…”
I sighed again. “Let it go for God’s sake,” I said, speaking louder than I should have.
Arm grumbled something but shut up. We hunkered down and watched the herd drink and crop grass. Arm nudged me and pointed. A young stud—he looked like a two-year-old—stood off to the side of the mares, posturing, snorting, dropping his head and kicking out with his heels. The mares pretty much ignored him, although several heads turned toward his “tough guy” act.
The young stallion was a good-looking horse. He stood fifteen hands or so, was nicely muscled, and moved well. His coat was called “sooty,” a color that isn’t seen often in mustangs—or other horses, for that matter. What it amounts to is a kind of layer of black, dullish hairs over a deeper, darker black.
As I said, the mares weren’t paying him much attention, but the blood-bay stallion was watching him closely.
Armando chuckled. “That youngster, his blood runs hot. He wishes to take some brides, no?”
“Or some putas—I don’t think it matters to him.”
Sooty worked his way around the group of mares toward the bay, showing off like a schoolboy in front of the girls all the way. The bay turned to face him and snorted, the sound loud and sharp and angry.
When Sooty was fifty feet from the leader of the herd he stopped his shenanigans and stood square, glaring at the bay. Other than a slight digging motion of his right forefoot, he was statue still. The bay took a step toward the youngster and as he did so his left shoulder dropped farther than it should have—whatever injury he had was in his left front leg or hoof.
Sooty, impetuous like all youth, charged, running full out, head extended, teeth exposed, his hooves raising little explosions of dust. The bay rose to meet him, shifted his bulk slightly to the side, and tore a dinner-plate size of hide and hair off his challenger, leaving a raw, bleeding patch on Sooty’s side, just behind his withers.
Sooty squealed in pain but whirled about to attack again—with essentially the same result. This time he ignored the pain and reared, striking out at the bay with front hooves that were faster than a rattler’s assault—and more deadly. A well-directed hoof could crush the forehead of another horse like an overripe melon.
The bay reared and that’s when Armando and I got a clear view of the horse’s left front hoof: it was twisted grotesquely inwardly, making a forty-five-degree angle with his leg. He struck with his right hoof, catching Sooty in the throat, and knocking him off his feet.
That was the bay’s strategy, and it worked well. As the younger horse floundered to get to his feet the bay closed his teeth around his right rear leg, just below the hock. We could see the muscles in the bay’s neck tighten, become thick strands of steel. Froth dripped from his jaws and he made a slight back-and-forth sawing movement with his entire head.
Sooty flailed his other legs and reached back, mouth gaping, to tear into the bay’s neck and throat. He had little strength; the pain from his captured leg all but incapacitated him.
There was a loud snap and Sooty screeched in pain. The lower leg had been almost severed; it was attached only by stands of muscle and flesh. Whitish red, jagged ends of bone appeared but were obscured in seconds by gushets of blood. It poured onto the sandy soil like water from a good well, at first soaking in and then forming a large puddle that grew as we watche
d it. The young stud’s squeals of pain became less strident, fading to what wasn’t far from the moan of a seriously injured human. Then, the horse was quiet. A shudder ran through his entire body and that was it. He’d never again challenge another horse.
The scent of the blood frightened the mares. They huddled closer together, eyes wide, their sides touching those of the others, bodies shivering as if with cold.
The bay stood back and watched his opponent bleed out. It didn’t take long. Then he turned away and hobbled back to his lookout spot. His gait was strange but not necessarily clumsy; I figured he’d been born with that twisted foot and had become acclimated to it. There’d never be any speed to him, but the size of his harem indicated he was tough and smart.
“That stallion,” Arm said admiringly, “he is one hard sonofabitch.”
“Yeah. He is. Getting him back to the ranch won’t be easy. I don’t think there’s but one way, Arm. We ride on opposite sides and get loops over his neck. When he tries to attack one of us the other drags him off and the same thing works from both sides. You saw what those jaws can do. If he gets close enough to either of us to get a hold on us or our horses, we’ll end up like that sooty over there drawing flies.”
“Es verdad. But we ride good, stout horses and we done this before.” He paused. “I jus’ wonder what we’ll do with him when we get him home—he ain’t gonna like the ranch.”
“All we gotta do is get him into the corral with the snubbing post, tie him good, and feed and water him for a few days without pesterin’ him. Then, I’ll see what I can do to get some manners into him.”
“Even after your work he’ll always be dangerous, Jake.”
“No doubt about it. No bronc man in the world can take a five-or six-year-old like him an’ make a cart pony outta him.”
“The mares, they will follow.”
“Yeah. We’ll put them into the north pasture, out of the stallion’s sight. There’s better grazing there than they’re used to, and good water. We’ll jus’ let ’em get fat while we work with their boss.”