Legends and Tales of the American West

by Richard Erdoes

  He was the solitary ruler of the prairie. Seldom glimpsed from afar, he was almost always alone, scornful of the company of other horses. Only once during his lifetime did he assemble a harem of sleek, untamed, never-roped mares to bequeath his seed to a new generation of starbright mustangs. Never caught, he seemed immortal. He was said to have the power to reproduce, to recreate himself in his exact likeness, grace, and strength, and only when a new Great White Stallion, resembling him in every aspect, was ready to take his place, would he consent to give up his ghost in a hidden, never-to-be-discovered spot, perpetuating his own legend of eternal life.

  There were many who hoped to conquer, possess, and ride the phantom horse, but all of them failed. The one who came closest was Don Alonso, a rich hacendado, obsessed with the love for fine horses as well as for woman flesh, yearning to see the Caballo Miraculoso tethered inside his corral, tamed, ready to submit to its rider. To capture the uncatchable, Don Alonso took twelve vaqueros with him, each with three of the fleetest horses, also his best roper and a marksman said to have the ability of “creasing” his elusive prey—that is, shooting at the great mustang so that the bullet merely grazed the animal’s neck close to his spine, momentarily stunning and immobilizing him so that he could be approached and lassoed. Don Alonso promised a thousand gold pieces to whoever could put the Great White Stallion in his power.

  The twelve vaqueros were born to the saddle, superb riders, who lusted after their master’s gold. Whenever one of their horses tired, driven to the very limit of endurance, they left it to die of exhaustion, switching to a fresh mount. But effortlessly, seeming to float phantomlike before them, the white steed outdistanced them, never letting the marksman come close enough to shoot, or the man with the reata close enough to rope him; but maddened with his obsession, Don Alonso would not give up. A year or two after every failure, he would call his best riders together to try again. And one day, remembered forever, he had it in his power to make his dream come true. He came upon the Great White Stallion, not alone as was his wont, but protecting his seraglio of mares against a pack of ravenous timber wolves. Unmindful of the human predators, the stallion put himself between his mares and their attackers, darting, lightning-swift, to every point of danger. With flashing eyes and flaring nostrils, he struck again and again with his hooves, crushing to death one wolf after the other. Now and then one of the lobos managed to fasten his fangs into his flesh, reddening his neck and flanks, but always he tossed it aside like chaff, breaking its back with his whirling hooves. After the last predator had been disposed of, the phantom horse neighed triumphantly, standing defiant, motionless as a statue, looking straight at Don Alonso as if wishing to challenge him.

  At this supreme moment Don Alonso broke into tears, waving back his roper and his marksman. “This archangel of a horse,” he told his vaqueros, “God has not meant him to be ridden by mortal man. Let us go.”

  Don Alonso gravely doffed his sombrero, waving it high, saluting the phantom steed. The Great White Stallion neighed in reply.

  Some versions of this tale have a sad ending. The noble steed is driven into the waterless desert. Weakened by thirst, he finds a waterhole and drinks greedily—as much as he can swallow. Heavy with liquid, and therefore slowed down, the king of the mustangs is finally caught and dragged into a corral from which there is no escape. With water, grass, and buckets of oats all around him, he refuses to eat or drink, preferring death to captivity. Untamed and unconquered, he dies on the twelfth day.

  Until Judgment Day

  There were once two fellows, Jack, the Gamblin’ Man, and the Kaintuck Kid. They met at a gambling saloon called the Bucket of Blood. Jack won over a thousand dollars at the faro table. Bucking the same tiger, the Kid lost everything he owned in this world, including his gold-plated watch and his saddle horse.

  “I dunno what to do now,” said the Kid. “I’m cleaned out for good. A feller without his hoss, a feller afoot, is lower than a chinch bug.”

  “Cheer up,” said the Gamblin’ Man. “I always had a dream, a mighty yen to catch me the Great White Stallion of the Prairies. I’ve sworn to myself that if ever I got ahold of some money, I’ll spend whatever time it takes to get him. I need a partner. How about it?”

  “Might as well,” said the Kid. The Gamblin’ Man bought the two finest horses he could find for himself and the Kid—deep-chested, fleet, and of great endurance—also a couple of pack mules, and supplies of whatever they might need for a long chase.

  “We’ll ride the prairies until we find that horse,” he vowed, “if it takes us till doomsday!”

  They hunted the Plains from horizon to horizon, all over the Great Ocean of Grass, the Llano Estacado, the southern deserts, along the foot of the Shining Mountains, from the Big Muddy to the Rockies, from the Pecos to the Yellowstone, and beyond, into the Plains of Canada. They lived on whatever game fell victims to their rifles, using the earth for their bed and the sky for their blanket. They ventured into wild country where there was no trace of humans, white or red. Doggedly, they followed even the faintest signs of wild horses. They sighted many herds of wild mustangs and, here and there, a solitary stallion. Time and again the Kid would point excitedly at one particularly superb, light-colored steed, exclaiming, “There, there, it’s him! What a horse! Let’s go get him!”

  But always Jack restrained him with a sobering “No, no. That’s not him, not by a long shot!”

  Spring turned into summer, summer into fall, flocks of birds darkening the sky on their way south. Winter arrived among flurries of snow. The old cottonwood trees along ice-covered streams were splitting asunder with loud cracks in the flesh-numbing cold.

  “My bones will soon be makin’ the same kind of noise, crackin’ apart in this goddam cold,” complained the Kid. “For chrissake, let’s go back to a real town, with a real hotel, with a real bed, and a real live woman to warm it up. Let’s go to where a man can get a drink. Right now I’d go for a mug of white ligntnin’ rather than for a white stallion.”

  “Go back, tenderfoot, go and rock yourself to death in a rockin’ chair on some crumblin’ porch,” said Jack who seemed oblivious to cold or heat, hunger or thirst, oblivious to a anything but the quest for the phantom horse. “Go back and warm your arse by some old woman’s stove. I’ve sworn to get what I’m come for, and if I don’t get him, I’ll go on after him until Judgment Day!”

  They were worn to the bone—Jack, the Gamblin’ Man, and the Kaintuck Kid. The skin of their faces had changed to a dark, cracked parchment. Their eyes glowed with a strange fever. Their bodies had shrunk; their ribs were sticking out like those of a starving wolf. Their horses were in a like state. One of the mules had broken down and died. There was nothing now for them but to ride, on and on, ride on like puppets on a string whose farthest end was hidden in nothingness. They rode wordlessly now, grimly, their silence broken only by the cry of an eagle or a coyote’s howl in the night.

  One day they stumbled upon the tracks of a wild horse, small hooves set wide apart, the tracks of a mustang with a marvelously long stride.

  “Look at that!” exclaimed the Kid. The Gamblin’ Man said nothing but rode on with redoubled fury, teeth clenched in an insane grin.

  Night came. They lay down on the bare earth, rolled up in their ponchos. A full moon was rising, bathing the prairie in its ghostly glow. Somewhere an owl hooted. A horse neighed. Jack was up in a flash, flinging his poncho aside. He had glimpsed a silvery shape wrapped in moonlight.

  “There, there, it’s him at last!” he shouted. “Oh God, how beautiful!”

  He spoke true, because a hundred yards off stood the Great White Stallion, motionless, as if carved from marble, looking straight at them.

  “Hurry, hurry, h-u-r-r-y!” screamed the Gamblin’ Man, more a long drawn out animal’s howl than a shout, as he jumped on his horse’s back, not bothering with saddle or rein, the Kid tearing after him.

  The White Stallion moved at last. Effortlessly, he kept his p
ursuers at the same distance, pacing, striding. The wondrous animal seemed to glide rather than pace, like a boat sailing before the wind, or a soaring bird. A picture of grace and liquid motion, the stallion seemed to move slowly, but still he easily outpaced his pursuers, coming after him at a dead run. Thus the chase went on, interminably, in the pale eerie light of the moon. At last, there was a faint hint of dawn. The hunters’ horses were close to collapse, their nostrils streaming blood, their mouths and necks flecked with foam. They no longer responded to shouted urgings, to spurs dug into their flanks, to the touch of the whip.

  “Stop, Jack, stop!” shouted the Kaintuck Kid. “It’s no use. We can no more catch him than catch our own shadows. This is the devil’s work. I’m scared!”

  “Stop if you want, you good-for-nothin’ son of a bitch!” Jack screamed back. “I’ll follow him into the jaws of hell, until Judgment Day!”

  On and on went the wild chase, the riders getting a last ounce of effort from their frantic mounts. Far ahead, the Kaintuck Kid discerned a black line. A mile further he recognized it for what it was—a huge crack in the earth’s crust, a yawning mile-deep chasm. He cried out in anguish: “Watch out, Jack, watch out! There’s a canyon!”

  The Gamblin’ Man paid him no mind, leaving his friend behind. The Kid got a glimpse of the White Stallion hurling himself into the air with a mighty leap, saw the Gamblin’ Man and his mount leaping after. The Kaintuck Kid reined in his horse at the last moment. It stood at the chasm’s rim, its legs trembling, covered with foam, eyes rolling with terror. Slowly, it sank to the ground, its rider jumping aside. Trembling himself, the Kid looked down it the gaping abyss. Far, far beneath him he made out the tiny shapes of Jack, the Gamblin’ Man, and his horse, crumpled, broken, lifeless. Of the Great White Stallion of the West not a hair could be seen.

  El Diablo Negro

  Just as there were many tales of the Great White Steed of the West, so we have also the stories of El Diablo Negro, the ebony-colored, man-eating stallion of the desert. Already Washington Irving heard marvelous accounts of a black horse, sixteen hands high, which could outpace the Phantom White Mustang of the Plains. The norteamericanos knew him as the Black Devil, the Blue Streak or, simply, the Raven. Indian storytellers called him the Black Death. Among the Sioux he was known as Wanagi Shunka-Wakan Sapa, the Black Ghost Horse.

  The Devil Stallion was wondrous to behold, bigger than any other horse known to man. Not as graceful as the White Phantom Steed, he inspired terror by his supernatural strength and ferocity. Beautiful he was, proud and splendid as Lucifer, the Fallen Angel among equines. He was sleek as oil, his skin like obsidian, reflecting the rays of the sun. His body was broad-chested, his hooves hard as flint, his neck an arched bow, his mane rippling silk, his eyes glowing coals.

  El Diablo Negro was invulnerable. Arrows and bullets rebounded from his glassy coat. In combat he shrieked like a panther, turning the blood in many a man’s body into ice. While the Indians feared him as a man-killer, they eagerly hunted his offspring, begotten upon ebony-colored mares, as black as their sire. Such sons or daughters of El Diablo were not only arrow- and bulletproof, but also rendered their riders impervious to all man-made weapons. But the most wonderful thing about the Black Devil was his power of human speech. He could talk, if only to one chosen man.

  Once a large war party of Arapahoes penetrated deep into the southwestern country, planning to raid the Comanches’ horse herds, but lost their own ponies instead, as well as the life of one of their braves. Having picketed their horses for the night and gone to sleep, they were awakened by a great commotion, neighing and whinnying. The din was caused by a monstrous black stallion that had gnawed through the hobbles of the Arapahoes’ mares and was making off in triumph with his newly acquired harem. Some of the mares’ owners followed in pursuit on whatever mounts they had left. El Diablo turned on the foremost rider, tore him from his pony, and carried him off between his enormous teeth just as a cat might carry off a mouse. His friends came upon the Black Devil and his band the next day. He had killed their companion with tooth and hoof, and, horror-stricken, they watched as the monster animal tore pieces of flesh from his body and devoured them. The Arapahoes did not try to recover his remains or their mares, but fled in terror, spreading far and wide the tale of the man-eating horse.

  The Buffalo Soldiers, a regiment of colored troopers, knew him as the Ole Black Debbil. He raided their horse herds as he had ravaged those of the Arapahoes. An army scout following him was torn from his saddle and stomped to death. The man-eater would have devoured him too had not a whole troop of cavalry driven him off.

  Two experienced mustangers had caught a wild, spirited, dun-colored stallion and placed him in their corral together with a dozen mares. At midnight they were roused by the shrieks of fighting horses. Hastening to the corral, they saw, by the light of their lanterns, their own stallion and the Black Devil locked in mortal combat, the black brute’s teeth dripping with blood. As the awe-struck mustangers watched, El Diablo literally tore the dun to pieces, tearing big bites of flesh from its quivering flanks. Looking up from its deadly work, the devil horse glimpsed the two watching men and instantly made for them. They fled in terror, barely getting back to their dugout, where they barricaded themselves behind the stout log door. All night long, until dawn, the black monster battered with his hooves against the thick door, finally splintering it but finding the narrow opening not wide enough to let him through. After trying again and again to squeeze himself through, squealing with rage at his inability to do so (and with the two mustangers cowering within, petrified with fear), El Diablo finally gave up and ambled off, not without the mustangers’ mares. Though being left afoot, and limp with exhaustion, the intended victims praised God and all His saints for having saved them from this horse of perdition.

  And yet there was one being, and a human at that, whom El Diablo loved after his own fashion—a Mescalero Apache named Buffalo Hawk. He was a medicine man. The whites called him a sorcerer. Besides performing strange rituals and healing ceremonies, he was also a fierce fighter and an avenging Angel of Death. In his youth the band of Mescaleros to which be belonged had been invited to a fiesta by Mexican villagers. Plied with pulque and aguardiente, the Indians had laid down in a befuddled sleep when their treacherous hosts fell upon them with gun and knife, killing all the men and carrying off the women and children into slavery. In this way the Mescalero shaman lost his entire family. Having not touched any of the proffered liquor, and in command of all his faculties, he had been the only one to escape, the last of his band. He had only one thing to live for—revenge!

  A lone assassin, shunning the company of men, he roamed the desert and mountains like a solitary panther in search of human prey. He spared no Mexican who crossed his path, neither man, woman, or child. It was no wonder that Mexicans dubbed him El Diablo Rojo—the Red Devil. One night the shaman was huddled before his campfire when he heard hoofbeats and a mighty snorting. Looking up, he beheld a black horse of monstrous size—the man-eating stallion. For the first time the four-legged devil spoke in the human tongue.

  “You diablo, I diablo,” he told the shaman. “You hate Mexicans, I hate Mexicans. The faintest whiff of the chili smell from their bodies drives me mad with the urge to kill them. Be thou my master. Let us team up to avenge ourselves upon this accursed breed. Together we can kill more than we can slay by ourselves.”

  The Mescalero shaman was the acknowledged champion of all horsemen among the southwestern tribes. He exulted to feel the mighty stallion’s body under him, gloried in the terrific speed with which the Black Devil carried him wherever he wished to go. The stallion’s swiftness, its teeth and hooves, together with the Apache’s stealth, his lance and death-dealing bow, made a fatal combination, a killing machine spreading terror throughout the Rio Grande border country. So welded seemed man and horse that the campesinos believed themselves the victims of a satanic centaur, killing them by the dozens and by the hundreds, transfor
ming a whole region into a wasteland. Villages and fields were abandoned, roads stretched untraveled as a whole population fled to escape the avenger’s fury.

  A few rich hacendados got together. Something had to be done or the two diablos would make their whole district uninhabitable. There was a bandido in the calabozo, awaiting death by hanging. El Tigre was his nickname. He acknowledged no other. He was sly as a fox and strong as a bull. For many years he had terrorized high and low, evading capture again and again. A woman’s betrayal had finally landed him in jail in the gallows’ shadow. She had lured him to her bed, had given him a sleeping potion, called in the rurales while he lay unconscious, and collected the reward.

  “Let us not hang this cabrón,” said the rich rancheros. “Of all the bandidos this El Tigre knows his trade best. Of all the assassins he is the deadliest. Let us offer him life and riches in exchange for ridding us of the two diablos, the two-legged and the four-legged one.”

  El Tigre was pleased. To go after the two diablos was dangerous, but preferable to being hanged. Also, the reward was commensurate with the risk. Besides, there was nothing El Tigre was afraid of. Thus began a deadly game—hunter pursued by hunter, killer by killer. The cat-and-mouse game went on for month after month. The bandit turned bounty hunter was skilled at his task. Stealthy, tireless, the human bloodhound and unshakable shadow followed the trail of the shaman and his devil horse. At last El Tigre came so close to his prey that in his mind he could already feel the reward money weighing down his pockets. Too close, as it turned out.

  Noiselessly, in the dark of the night, the bounty hunter crept toward the shaman’s campsite, a knife clenched between his teeth, a pistol stuck in his belt. Not the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of the tiniest twig could be heard as, inch by inch, unseen and inaudible, El Tigre moved stealthily toward his intended victims—unseen and unheard, but not unsmelled. While the shaman slumbered, the demon horse picked up the faint odor of chili. El Tigre’s having wolfed down a big plate of chili con carne before setting out on his murderous endeavor became his undoing. With flaring nostrils the Black Devil followed the hated scent carried to him by the wind. Before the luckless bandido knew what had hit him, steel-hard hooves were pounding him into a bloody mass while huge teeth tore chunks of flesh from his body.