by B. M. Bower
Jack, loosening his riata as he dismounted, caught the loop over the high horn and let the rope drop to the ground. He wore no spurs; and as for Surry, he had no bridle and bit, but a hackamore instead.
Jack threw the reins over the neck of the horse. “Come, old fellow,” he said, quite as if he were speaking to a person, and started off. And Surry, his neck arched, his ears perked knowingly, stepped out after him with that peculiar, springy gait that speaks eloquently of perfect muscles and a body fairly vibrating with energy; the riata trailed after him, every little tendency towards a kink taken out of it.
“Dios! What a caballo is that white one!” Dade heard a Salinas man exclaim, and flushed at the praise.
Back they came, Jack and Surry, with Jack ten feet in advance of the horse; for José had chosen to remain at the southern end, with the sun at his left shoulder. Jack, for all his eagerness to begin, found time to shake hands with Bill and say a word to some others as he passed—and those eyes up there that watched did not miss one single movement.
“Look, you! The gringo is telling his friends adios while he may!” some one shouted loudly from across the arena; and a great laugh roared from the throats that were dark, and handclapping at the witticism made the speaker a self-conscious caballero indeed.
At the corral, which was his starting-point, Jack took up the dragging riata, and with his handkerchief wiped off the dust while he coiled it again; hung it over the saddle horn and waited for the signal.
He was scowling now at certain remarks that came to his ears from the seats, with titters and chuckles to point their wit. But he sent a cheering eye-signal to Dade, whose face was strained and noticeably white under the tan.
Half-way down the line, among the Americans, there was a little stir, and then a pistol barked with that loud crash which black powder makes. Jack, on the instant when the smoke curled up in a little, balloon-like puff, turned and leaped into the saddle. The duel of riatas was begun.
CHAPTER XXIV
FOR LOVE AND A MEDAL
Down the roped lane thundered José, whirling his riata over his head till the loop had taken full twenty of the sixty feet of rawhide.
Galloping to meet him, Jack gave his rope a forward, downward fling and formed a little loop—a loop not one-third the size of José’s—and held it dangling beside Surry’s shoulder. So, at the very start, they showed themselves different in method, even though they might be the same in skill.
They met, with fifteen feet between them as they flashed past. José flung out his lifted hand. The loop hissed and shot straight for Jack’s head.
Jack flung out his little loop, struck the big one fairly, and threw it aside. Even so, the end might have caught him, but for the lengthening lunge which Surry made in mid-air. The loop flecked Surry’s crinkled tail and he fled on to the far end and stopped in two short, stiff-legged jumps.
As Jack coiled his riata and slid off he heard the caballeros yelling praise of José. But he did not mind that in the least. In that one throw he had learned José’s method; the big loop, the overhead swirl—direct, bullet-swift, deadly in its aim. He knew now what Dade had wanted to tell him—what it was vital that he should know. And—he hugged the thought—José did not know his method; not yet.
A shot, and he was off again with his little loop. José, like a great, black bird, flew towards him with the big loop. As they neared he saw José’s teeth show in the smile of hate. He waited, his little loop ready for the fling should his chance come.
José was over-eager. The great, rawhide hoop whistled and shot down aslant like the swoop of a nighthawk. Surry’s eye was upon it unwinkingly. He saw where the next leap would bring him within its terrible grip, and he made that leap to one side instead, so that the rawhide thudded into the dust alongside his nose. He swerved again lest José in jerking it up should catch his feet, and went on with an exultant toss of his white head. It was the game he knew—the game Diego had played with him many times, to the discomfiture of the peon.
“He is a devil—that white caballo!” cried a chagrined voice from among the vaqueros crowding the ropes so that they bulged inward.
“Hah! devil or no, they will go down, those two white ones! Saw you the look of José as he passed? He has been playing with them for the sport of the people. Look you! I have gold on that third throw. The next time—it is as José chooses—”
The bark of the pistol cut short the boastings of that vaquero. This was the third pass, and much Spanish gold would be lost upon that throw if José missed.
“Three to one, m’ son,” bawled Bill Wilson remindingly, as Jack loped past with his little loop hanging beside him, ready but scarcely seeming so. José was coming swiftly, the big horse lunging against the Spanish bit, his knees flung high with every jump he made, like a deer leaping through brush. And there was the great, rawhide loop singing its battle-song over his head, with the soft who-oo-oo before he released it for the flight.
He aimed true—but Surry had also a nice eye for distance. He did not swerve; he simply stiffened every muscle and stopped short. Even as he did so the black horse plunged past; and Jack, lifting his hand, whirled his loop swiftly once to open it, and gave it a backward fling.
Straight past his shoulder it shot, whimpering, following, reaching—the force of the fling carrying it far, far … José heard it whining behind him, glanced quickly, thought to beat it to the end of its leash. He leaned far over—farther, so that his cheek touched the flying black mane of his horse. He dug deep with his spurs—but he dug too late.
The little loop narrowed—it had reached as far as sixty feet of rawhide could reach and have any loop at all. It sank, and caught the outflung head of the black horse; slid back swiftly and caught José as the horse lunged and swung short around; tightened and pressed José’s cheek hard against the black mane as the rawhide drew tight across the back of his neck.
The black horse plunged and tried to back away; the white one stiffened against the pull of the rope. Between the two of them, they came near finishing José once for all. And from the side where stood the white men came the vicious sound of a pistol shot.
“Slack, Surry!” Jack, on the ground, glimpsed the purpling face of his foe. “Slack, you devil!”
Near sixty feet he had to run—and José was strangling before his eyes; strangling, because Surry’s instant obedience was offset by José’s horse, who, facing the other at the first jerk of the riata, backed involuntarily with the pull of the pinioned reins. The Spanish bit was cutting his mouth cruelly, and José’s frenzied clawing could not ease the cruel strain upon either of them.
A few terrible seconds, and then Jack overtook them, eaught the horse by the bridle, and stopped him; and the blood which the cruel bit had brought when the spade cut deep, stained Jack’s white clothes red where it fell.
“Slack, Surry! Come on!” he cried, his voice harsh with the stress of that moment. And when the rawhide hung loose between the two horses he freed José of the deadly noose, and saw where it had burnt raw the skin of his neck on the side where it touched. A snaky, six-strand riata can be a rather terrible weapon, he decided, while he loosed it and flung it from him.
José, for the first time getting breath enough to gasp, tried to straighten himself in the saddle; lurched, and would have gone off on his head if Jack had not put up a hand to steady him. So he led him, a shaken, gasping, disarmed antagonist, across the little space that separated them from where Don Andres and four other Spanish gentlemen sat before the middle gate of the corral.
“Bravo!” cried a sweet, girl voice; and a rose, blood-red and heavy with perfume, fell at Jack’s feet. He gave it one cold glance and let it lie. In another moment the black horse crushed it heedlessly beneath his hoof, as Jack turned to the judges.
“Señors, I bring you Don José Pacheco.”
So suddenly had the contest ended that those riders who helped to form the riata fence stood still in their places, as if another round had yet to be fo
ught. Beyond the pistol shot and the girl voice crying well done, the audience was quiet, waiting.
Then José, sitting spent upon his horse, lifted a hand that shook weakly. His fingers fumbled at his breast, and he held out the shining medal of gold—the medal with diamonds prisoning the sunlight so that the trinket flashed in his hand.
“Señor,” he said huskily, “the medalla—it is yours.”
Jack looked at him; looked at the bent faces of the frowning judges; looked up at Teresita, watching the two with red lips parted and breath coming quickly; looked again queerly at José, gasping still, and holding out to him the medalla oro. Jack did a good deal of thinking in a very short space of time.
“I don’t want your medal,” he said. “Let some Californian fight you for it, if he likes. That is not for a gringo.”
Perhaps there was a shade of the theatrical element in his speech and his manner, but he was perfectly innocent of any such intention; and the people before him were nothing if not dramatic. He got his response in the bravos and the applause that followed the silence of sheer amazement. “Gracias!” they cried, in their impulsive appreciation of his generosity.
“The horse which you offered for a prize, Don Andres, I will claim,” Jack went on, when he could be heard—and he did not wait long, for short-lived indeed is the applause given to an alien. “And I will ride him as soon as you desire.”
“Yes! Let us see him ride that caballo!” cried the fickle mass of humanity. “By a trick of chance he won the duelo, and the medalla he refused because he knows it was not won fairly. Where is that yellow caballo which no man has ridden? Let him show us what he can do with that yellow one!”
Dade, pushing his way exultantly toward him, saw the blaze of anger at their fickleness leap into Jack’s eyes.
“Sí, I will show you!” he called out. “It is well that you should see some horsemanship! Bring the yellow caballo, then. Truly, I will show you what I can do.”
“Come, Surry,” called Dade, and the white horse walked up to him and nibbled playfully his bearskin chaparejos. “Solano’s in the little corral, off this big one. I’ll bring your saddle—”
“I don’t want any saddle. I’m going to ride him bareback, with a rope over his nose. Let me have your spurs, will you? Did you hear them say I won the duel with luck? I’ll show these greasers what a gringo can do!” He spoke in Spanish, to show his contempt of their opinion of him, and he curled his lip at the jibes they began to fling down at him; the jibes and the taunts—and vague threats as well, when those who had wagered much upon the duelo began to reckon mentally their losings.
In the adobe corral he stood with his riata coiled in his hand and Dade’s spurs upon his heels, and waited until Solano, with a fling of heels into the air, rushed in from the pen where the big bull had waited until he was let out to fight the grizzly.
“Bareback he says he will ride that son of Satanas!” jeered a wine-roughened voice. “Boaster that he is, look you how he stands! He is afraid even to lasso that yellow one!”
Jack was indeed deliberate in his movements. He stood still while the horse circled him twice with head and tail held high. When Solano brought up with a flourish on the far side of the corral, Jack turned to Dade and Valencia standing guard at the main gate, their horses barring the opening.
“See that it’s kept clear out in front,” he told them. “I’ll come out a-flying when I do come, most likely.”
Whereat those who heard him laughed derisively. “Never to the gate will you ride him, gringo—even so you touch his back! Not twice will the devil give you luck,” they yelled, while they scrambled for the choicest positions.
Jack, standing in the center quietly, smiled at them, and gave the flip downward and forward that formed the little loop to which he seemed so partial. He tossed that loop upward, straight over his head; a careless little toss, it looked to those who watched. His hand began to rotate upon his supple wrist joint—and like a live corkscrew the rawhide loop went up, and up, and up, and grew larger while it climbed.
Solano snorted; and the noise was like a gun in the dead silence while those thousands watched this miracle of a rawhide riata that apparently climbed of its own accord into the air.
The loop, a good ten feet in diameter, swirled horizontally over his head. The coil in his hand was paid out until there was barely enough to give him power over the rest. His hand gave a quick motion sidewise, and the loop dropped true, and settled over the head of Solano.
Jack flung a foot backward and braced himself for the pull, the riata drawn across one thigh in the “hip-hold” which cowboys use today when they rope from the ground. Solano gave one frightened lunge and brought up trembling with surprise.
That he knew nothing of the feel of a rope worked now to Jack’s advantage, for sheer astonishment held the horse quiet. A flip, and the riata curled in a half-hitch over Solano’s nose; and Jack was edging slowly towards him, his hands moving along the taut riata like a sailor climbing a rope.
Solano backed, shook his head futilely, snorted, and rolled his eyes—mere frills of resentment that formed no real opposition to Jack’s purpose. Five minutes of maneuvering to get close, and Jack had twisted his fingers in the taffy-colored mane; he went up, and landed fairly in the middle of Solano’s rounded back and began swiftly coiling the trailing riata.
“Get outa the way, there!” he yelled, and raked the big spurs backward when Solano’s forefeet struck the ground after going high in air. Like a bullet they went out of that corral and across the open space where the duel had been fought, with Dade and Valencia spurring desperately after.
It took a long ten minutes to bring Solano back, chafing, but owning Jack’s mastery—for the time being, at least. He returned to a sullen audience, save where the Americans cheered him from their side of the corral.
“He is a devil—that blue-eyed one!” the natives were saying grudgingly to one another; but they were stubborn and would not cheer. “Saw you ever a riata thrown as he threw it? Not José Pacheco himself ever did so impossible a thing; truly the devil is in that gringo.” So they muttered amongst themselves when he came back to the corral and slipped, laughing, from Solano’s sweat-roughened back.
“You can have your Surry!” he cried boastfully to Dade, who was the first to reach him. “Give me a month to school him, and this yellow horse will be mighty near as good as your white one. I’d rather have him than forty gold medals!”
“Señor,”—it was José, his neck wrapped in a white handkerchief, coming forward from where he had sat with Don Andres—“Señor, I am sorry that I did not kill you; but yet I admire your skill, and I wish to thank you for your generosity; the medalla is not mine, even though you refuse it. Since I have found one better than I, Don Andres shall keep the medalla until I or some other caballero has won it fairly. For my life, which you also refused to take, I—cannot thank you.”
Jack looked at him intently. “You will thank me,” he said grimly, “later on.”
José’s face went white. “Señor, you do not mean—”
“I do mean—just that.”
“But, Señor—” There are times when pride drops away from the proudest man and leaves him weak to the very core of him; weak and humbled beyond words.
Big Jerry Simpson saved that situation from becoming intolerable. With Moll’s great ears flopping solemnly to herald his approach, Jerry rode up, perfectly aware that he brought a murmur of curiosity from those who saw his coming.
For Jerry was leading Manuel by the ear; Manuel with his hands tied behind him with Jerry’s red bandanna; Manuel with his lips drawn away from his teeth in the desire to kill, and his eyes sullen with the impotence of that desire.
“Sa-ay,” drawled Jerry, when he came up to the little group, “what d’ye want done with this here greaser that fired on Jack? Some of the fellers over there wanted to take him out and hang him, but I kinda hated to draw attention away from Jack’s p’formance—which was right interesti
ng. Bill Wilson, he reckoned I better fetch him over here and ask you fellers about it; Bill says this mob of greasers might make a fuss if the agony’s piled on too thick, but whatever you say will be did.” With his unoccupied hand he helped himself to a generous chew of tobacco, and spat gravely into the dust.
“Fer as I’m concerned,” he drawled lazily, “I’m willin’ to help string him up. He done as dirty a trick as ever I seen, and he done it deliberate. I had m’ eye peeled fer him all the time, and I seen he wasn’t goin’ to stand back and let Jack git the best of that greaser if he could help it. He was cunnin’—but shucks! I see all along why he kept that gun p’inted out front—”
“Turn him loose,” said Dade suddenly, interrupting him. “We don’t want to start any trouble, Jerry. He may need hanging, but we can’t afford to give him what he deserves. It’s a ticklish crowd, right now; they’ve lost a lot on the duel, and they’ve drunk enough wine to swim a mule. Turn him loose. I mean it,” he added, when he caught the incipient rebellion in Jerry’s weather-beaten face. “I’m bossing things here today. He didn’t hit anybody, and I’m beginning to think we can get through the day without any real trouble, if we go easy.”
“Wa-al—” Jerry scratched his stubbly jaw reflectively with his free hand, and looked down at his captive. “I’ll give him a derned good wallopin’, then, just to learn him manners. I’ve been wantin’ to lick him since yesterday mornin’ when he tried to drive off Bawley and Lay-fayette and William Penn. I lost two hours off’n my work, argyin’ with him. I’ll take that outa his hide, right now.”
He induced Moll to turn around, and led Manuel away from the presence of the women lest they should be shocked at his deed; and on the cool side of the farthest shed he did indeed give Manuel a “derned good walloping.” After which he took a fresh chew of tobacco, lounged over to where Moll waited and switched desultorily at the flies, mounted, and went placidly home to his Mary.