Stolen Stallion

a division of F+W Media, Inc.

H
E STOOD SIXTEEN THREE, BUT HIS HOOFS PRESSED THE
ground like the paws of a cat. Wherever the moonlight fingered him, shoulder or flank, it touched on silk. With head raised, he looked into the wind, and there seemed in him a lightness of spirit, as though he were capable of leaping into the air and striding on it; but the leather crossbars of a halter were fitted over his head and a lead rope trailed down into the hand of Lake, the half-breed. The stallion, that looked as much king of the earth as ever a hawk was king of the sky, was tied fast to a brutal humanity.

Lake turned his savage face. The same moon that lingered on the beauty of the horse etched out the ugliness of the man with a few high lights and skull-like shadows.

“What’s he called?” asked Lake.

Harry Richmond was grinning, for he understood the excitement that was making the voice of Lake hard and quick.

“Brandy’s his name,” said Richmond. “And that’s what he’s like, ain’t he? A regular shot under the belt, eh?”

He moved to another position, so that he could examine the stallion anew with familiar but ever-delighted eyes. Richmond had the lean legs of a rider and a fat lump of a body mounted on them, so that he looked like a blue crane when it stands at the margin of water with its head laid back on its shoulders, readier for sleep than for frogs.

“Looks ain’t the hoss,” Lake was saying. “But where’d you get this one? You never had nothing on your ranch but mustangs that was rags and bones, and this here is a thoroughbred.”

“Yeah,” agreed the rancher, “he makes even Mischief look pretty sick, don’t he?”

He pointed toward the big mare which stood near by. Mischief seemed nothing, after the stallion, but any good judge who narrowed his eyes could not fail to see her points. She had been caught wild off the range and never more than half tamed; but, like a wild-caught hawk, she seemed able to move without tiring. In every rodeo race where she was entered, the cowpunchers were sure to back her with their money, and she never yet had failed them.

“Maybe he has looks,” reiterated Lake, “but looks ain’t the hoss. Take and run ’em, and Mischief would likely eat him up.”

“That’s what we’re goin’ to see,” answered Harry Richmond. “That’s why I got you down here, Lake. I’ll pay you ten dollars, if you’ll run the mare a mile or two against that stallion.”

Lake shook his head with a movement so slow that he seemed merely to be looking over each shoulder. “I won’t run Mischief for ten, but I’ll race her for fifty,” he declared.

“For fifty!” exclaimed Richmond. “And me ridin’ Brandy? Me givin’ you more’n a pound for every dollar of the bet? I ain’t such a fool.”

“Then it ain’t a go,” said Lake. “I’ll run Mischief yonder to the top of that hill, where the rocks stick out and back here for a finish.”

“Two miles, and a lump like me ridin’ against a skinny buzzard of a jockey like you?” protested Richmond. But then his eye ran over the silk and the shine of Brandy, and he said through his teeth, “I’ll do it!”

He picked up a saddle and bridle, and began to prepare the stallion.

Lake made a cigarette and presently was blowing dissolving wreaths of smoke into the moonshine.

“Look!” he commanded, and waved his hand toward the rattletrap barn near which they were standing, and toward the broken-backed house beyond, and then to the hills and hollows of the ranch, naked as waves of the sea. “Look” said Lake. “You never raised no horse like Brandy on this kind of a place, and you never paid for him out of your pocket. Where’d you get him?”

“I only got half of him,” said Richmond, “but, if he can run the way I think, I’ll have the other half, too.”

“Who owns the other half?” asked Lake.

“You know Charlie Moore?”

“That old cowpuncher of yours? That cockeyed one?”

“That’s him. He owns the other half,” answered Richmond. “Three or four years back, Charlie Moore was over at the railroad station in Parmalee, and a train pulls in, and on that train there’s the racin’ stable of Sam Dickery, the big oil man and crook. And they take off a dead mare, a brood mare by the name of Mary Anne, that had had a foal before her time; the foal was carted off, too, not strong enough to stand. It was the get of Single Shot, that foal was, and the stable manager cursed the hair off the head of the veterinary who said he couldn’t save the colt. Anyway, they got ready to knock the foal on the head when old Charlie Moore — that never did have no sense — said he’d like to have the colt. Dickery’s trainer grinned and said the deal was on, and all it would cost Charlie was the price of diggin’ the grave. But Charlie spent a week right there on the spot, and never moved until he got that colt onto its feet; and here it is today — Brandy!”

“Yeah,” said Lake, “that’s why Brandy has a kind of hand-polished look about him. Every fool in the world has got one good thing in him, I guess, and this is what Charlie Moore’s done with his life. But how come that you got a half claim in the horse?”

As he spoke, Lake began to dig softly, with the tips of his fingers, among the India-rubber strands of muscles which overlaid the shoulder of Brandy.

Harry Richmond thrust out his head with a laugh, saying, “Moore’s a half-wit, just about. He never has any money. The boys do him out of his month’s pay before he ever gets close to a saloon. So when the colt got sick a couple times and needed a vet, I took a chance and paid the bills, and pulled a half interest out of Moore. That was when Brandy was more’n a year old, and I could see that he was goin’ to be somethin’. It was like takin’ half the teeth out of Moore’s head, but he signed up a paper with me. And I’m goin’ to get the other half of Brandy, too, if he can make a fool out of Mischief. Ready?”

They sat the saddles side by side, with Mischief already sensing the contest and beginning to dance for it, while Brandy fell to looking once more into the eye of the wind that brought to his nostrils so many tales from the unknown range.

That was why, when the count of ten was finished, Mischief shot off many a length in the lead; Harry Richmond, thinking of his fifty dollars, began to curse, calling Lake back for a “fair start.” The words were blown off his lips. There is something in every hot-blooded horse that can sense a race, and Brandy went after Mischief like a hurled spear.

It was soft, sandy going over which Mischief dusted along lightly, while the pounding hoofs of Brandy broke through, flinging up handfuls of sand that puffed out into clouds. They had six furlongs of such going before they struck the steep slope of the hills, and Richmond waited for that ascent to quench the speed of the stallion. Instead, Brandy went up that rise like a bounding mule deer, and collared the mare at the rocks, where they turned.

A cry came suddenly out of the throat of Richmond. He struck the stallion with the flat of his hand. And then he found himself leaning backward, fighting to get into an upright position, for the mount seemed to be leaping out from under the rider. Brandy had twisted his head a little to the side, in the full fury of his effort, as though he were about to turn a corner, and nothing could have been stranger than to see him boring his head so crookedly into the wind. One might have thought that he was looking back for orders from his rider.

That was the end of the race. As Richmond went by, his heart lifted into his throat by the prodigious striding of the stallion, he saw the face of Lake convulsed with malice and disbelief. And when Richmond pulled up at the starting point behind the barn, the mare was thirty lengths behind.

The half-breed had nothing to say. He dismounted, threw the reins, and then stepped back to watch the dropped head, the heaving sides, the sweat that ran in a steady trickle from the belly of Mischief. As for Brandy, he was merely polished black by the run, and seemed on tip-toe for another race.

Still in silence, Lake drew out his wallet to pay the bet.

“Wait a minute,” protested Richmond. “Fifty dollars will break you. I’m goin’ to give you money, not take it away.”

“She lay down and quit!” said Lake fiercely.

“She didn’t quit,” answered Richmond. “She’ll go right on winnin’ all kinds of races at the rodeos; but, the way Brandy come wingin’ past her, he would ‘a’ beat pretty near any hoss in the world. He’s goin’ to get his chance, too. Listen to me, Lake! You got the wool pulled out of your ears and your brain tuned up?”

“What kind of a crooked deal?” asked Lake.

“It ain’t crooked,” declared Richmond. “You take a poor half-wit like Charlie Moore, what would he do with a stake hoss? He wouldn’t know. But you and
me
would know. You hear me, Lake? This here Brandy has gotta go East, and pick up a new name, and he’s goin’ to meet the best in the land — for the biggest stakes. I can’t leave the ranch — there’s too much money for me right here in beef — but
you’re
free, Lake. You’re goin’ to take Brandy tomorrow night, and you’re goin’ to start East with him. You’re goin’ to clean up, and you and me go half and half!”

The half-breed looked at Richmond and grinned. Then he put back his ugly face so that the moonlight flooded it, and laughed silently.

T
HE PLANS WHICH THE RANCHER AND THE HALF-BREED
laid by moonlight were perfectly definite and simple. Lake was to come the following night, after Richmond had scraped together some money to cover expenses on the trip to the East. The half-breed was to steal Brandy and make for the railroad, not at the town of Parmalee, close at hand, but far to the north. On the road he could ship Brandy to the East, and inside of three weeks the big horse might be appearing on the tracks. It was a scheme that promised the greater success because the crime in which they shared would force them to a mutual honesty in their own dealings.

But next morning a message came. A messenger rode out from Parmalee with a brief letter from Lake to Richmond. The rancher read:

The name of Silvertip was unknown to Harry Richmond. He burned the letter and went in search of information. Since the punchers were out on the range, he went into the kitchen with his questions; the cook stopped peeling potatoes while he answered.

“I never seen Silvertip no more’n I ever seen wire gold,” said the “doctor,” as the cook was sometimes called, “But I’ve heard gents talk about him, here and there. He gets his name from a coupla streaks of gray hair over his temples, but he ain’t old. He ain’t thirty. He’s ripped the top ground off a fortune twenty times, but he never stops long enough to dig out the pay dirt, because he’s always in a hurry. Trouble is what he hunts for breakfast, kills it for lunch, and eats it for supper.”

“What kind of trouble?” asked Harry Richmond, gnawing his fleshy lip.

“Any kind,” said the cook. “A hoss that pitches right smart is his kind of a hoss; a forest on fire is his kind of a forest; a gold-rush town is his kind of a town; and a two-gun fightin’ man is his kind of a man.”

“They ought to outlaw that kind of a hound,” said the rancher angrily.

“No,” said the cook. “He ain’t any trouble to a sheriff; he’s more of a help. Coupla years back, down in Brown’s Creek, when the gold rush come and half the yeggs in the country flocked in, the regular, honest miners, they got together and they sent an invitation to Silvertip to go and settle down with them for a while. And he went. And that was a loud town, Richmond. That was a town that you could hear all the way across the mountains. But after Silvertip was there a week, he soothed it down such a lot that you couldn’t hear a whisper out of it.”

“He killed the bad actors, you mean?” asked Richmond.

“I dunno that he killed any. I hear that mostly he can shoot so straight that he don’t have to kill; and when he comes in one door, the yeggs go out the other.”

Richmond went off to digest this news, agreeing in his mind to despise Lake less than when the half-breed’s letter had arrived. The rattling wheels of an approaching buckboard brought him out of the house, and he saw Charlie Moore drive up with a big stranger on the seat beside him. The stranger’s mount, a big bay gelding with chasings of silver aflash on it, jogged behind the rig, which was loaded with the supplies which Moore had been sent to buy the evening before. It was the simplest way of getting him off the place while Lake arrived to test the stallion.

Charlie Moore drew up near the kitchen door and climbed to the ground; his big companion glided down with one step, as though from a saddle.

“Meet Silvertip, Mr. Richmond — Harry Richmond,” said Charlie Moore. He smiled with pride to be presenting such a famous man.

Harry Richmond stepped forward with a grunt and a grin, but the manners of Silvertip were rather more Latin than American. He took off his hat and bowed a little to the rancher, as he shook hands. Richmond saw, above the temples, the spots of gray, and an odd chill passed through him.

It was a brown face that he looked into, and the expression was full of such gentle peace as the rancher had never seen before. It was the look of one who daydreams, with the faintest of smiles continually about the lips. Never was a face more handsome, more honest, more open; and yet the chill was still working in the spinal marrow of Richmond. Brandy, and all the fortune that could be made out of the great horse, was as good as his own, until the arrival of Silvertip. Now he felt that good fortune had withdrawn many miles from him.

They began to unload the buckboard together. The flour sacks, the sides of bacon, the hams, were easily handled. But when it came to the big two-hundred-pound sacks of potatoes, which Richmond and old Charlie Moore struggled with together, Silver picked them up by the ears and carried the burden easily into the storeroom.

“He’s strong,” said the rancher.

“Aye,” said Charlie Moore, wagging his head in admiration. “He’s mighty strong. He’s too strong. A gent like that is too strong to work.”

There was a meaning behind this remark which Harry Richmond appreciated to the full, and he looked suddenly and sharply at Moore, as though wondering how far that simple-minded fellow could have looked into a man like Silvertip. But there was nothing to be seen in the face of Moore other than his usual expression, which was that of a child half dreaming over the world and half hurt by it.

Moore looked much younger than his fifty-five years, except for the pain which had worked in the lines about the mouth and in the center of the forehead. But his hair was still dark, and his eyes were still bright. His clothes were those of any hard-working cowpuncher, except that his boots were common cowhide — and where does one find a self-respecting cowpuncher, who is without meticulous pride in his footwear? But there was no pride in Charlie Moore. He had gone all his life quite content if he could avoid trouble and understand the need of the moment, and the commands which were given to him. He was not, like Silvertip, “a gent too strong to work!”

To be sure, Silvertip was walking by again with the weight of another sack trundled comfortably in his arms. As he passed, Harry Richmond looked askance and saw the great spring of muscles that arched from shoulder to shoulder, the corseting of might which gripped him about the loins and swelled his torso above hips as lean as those of a desert wolf that can run all day and fight all night. That was what Silvertip seemed to Harry Richmond — a machine too flawless to be used on the mere mechanics of ranch work.

“Silvertip, he’s an old friend of mine,” said Charlie Moore, dusting the white of flour from his coat sleeves, as the unloading of the wagon was finished. “I guess,” he added, with a sudden wistfulness, “that Silver’s about the best friend that I got!” He blundered on: “Which ain’t meanin’ that Silvertip takes me very serious. Nobody does. But I guess he means more to me than anybody else.”

Harry Richmond, watching very closely, saw the smile struck from the mouth of Silvertip; but at the same instant the hand of Silver went out and rested for a moment on the shoulder of Moore. The latter seemed to accept that touch as an assurance of all that he could have wished. He brightened; with an air of surprised happiness, he looked up at Silvertip, who avoided that glance by saying to Richmond:

“Charlie tells me that you and he have a great horse out here.”

“Pretty fair — pretty fair,” answered Richmond. With an air of thought, he pursed his mouth until the tip of his nose was raised, and his fat face was sculptured into a new and amazing design. “Soft — but I’ll tell you what he’s got, that Brandy. He’s got pretty good lines. That’s why I could use him with some mustang mares and get me some saddle stock. I’ll tell you what, Charlie — I’ll buy out your half in Brandy. He ain’t much. He’s too heavy and soggy, kind of, in the quarters. But I’m tired of this partnership business, and I’ll buy him off you. I’ll give you a good price for your share, too. Whatcha want, Charlie? Speak up and name your price.”

“Sell my half of Brandy?” asked Moore, staring like a round-eyed child. He laughed a little, but the pain remained in his blue eyes. “I could easier sell half of myself,” he concluded.

“Now, don’t you be a fool,” said Richmond. He stepped closer, so that the superiority of his bulk might impress itself on the eye of Moore as the weight of his words impressed itself on the simple mind of the puncher. He laid the tip of a forefinger like a dagger at the breast of his ranch hand. “Who knows more about business, you or me?” he demanded.

“Why, you do, Harry,” answered Moore, instantly abashed. “Sure, you know a lot more than I do.”

“Then don’t be a fool,” went on Richmond. “I’m goin’ to pay you your own price. I’ll pay you up to six months’ wages. Not that half of Brandy is worth that much, but just because I wanta get rid of the argument. I hate argument. You know that. I’m goin’ to give you a chance to pick up a price of good money, Charlie; I’m goin’ to show you that I’m your friend.”

For it seemed to Richmond that this was the time to strike, and strike hard, for the prize, before Silvertip laid his wise eye on the stallion and saw Brandy’s real value. And Charlie Moore, amazed and baffled and somewhat agape as he listened to the impressive words of Richmond, rolled his eyes from side to side.

The quiet voice of Silvertip broke in: “No man will sell the blood out of his body, Richmond, and that’s what Brandy is to Charlie. Let’s put up the team and have a look at the horse.”

Charlie Moore heaved a sigh of relief; Richmond bit his lip. But by those few words the matter seemed to be settled beyond appeal. If Richmond wanted the stallion, he would, in fact, have to steal him. And he cursed Silvertip with a silent fervor.

They put up the mustangs, ran the buckboard into the wagon shed, and went to the big corral behind the barn, where Brandy was grazing. He could have had his name for his color; he was a golden fire, red-stained and sun-burnished. At the whistle of Moore, he picked up his head from his grazing and turned suddenly about. Black silk covered his legs to the knees and the hocks; black velvet covered his muzzle; and between the eyes there was a white wedge, like the hallmark of the Master Maker.

“Kind of soft all over,” said Richmond. “Kind of heavy and soggy in the quarters, ain’t he? But sort of good-lookin’; picture-book hoss, that kids would be crazy about. That’s all.”

But a faint cry had come out of the throat of Silvertip. He was through the bars of the fence and stepping across toward the stallion with hand extended. Charlie Moore made so free as to grasp the arm of Richmond with a frantic hand.

“Look! Look!” said Moore. “It’s even the kind of a horse for Silvertip. It’s the kind of a horse he wants, and he’s never wanted a horse before.”

“How come?” asked Richmond angrily. “How come you say he never has wanted a hoss before?”

“Look at what I mean,” muttered Charlie, keeping enchanted eyes upon the picture of Silvertip approaching the stallion. “What I mean is that Silver, he never finds nothin’ that he really wants. That’s why he never stops still. There ain’t no girl pretty enough to stop him for a week. There ain’t no house right enough to be his home. There ain’t no mine rich enough to keep him diggin’. There ain’t no man big enough to be his friend. There ain’t no horse fine enough for him to make a partner of it. No horse before Brandy, maybe! But look at Silver now! Look at the way he’s steppin’ around him. Look at him measurin’ and measurin’ and admirin’ — ”

“There ain’t much in this world that Silvertip’s interested in except a fight — is that it?” asked the rancher.

“That and danger,” said Charlie Moore absently. “There’s danger been put into the world, and there’s men been put to love it, I guess. Why, he ain’t even satisfied with Brandy — not even with him! Look at Silver shakin’ his head a little and shruggin’ his shoulders. And here he comes back to us. Hey, Silver!” he called. “Don’t you make up your mind till you’ve tried him. Don’t you damn Brandy till you’ve tried him, will you?”

“Of course I’ll try him,” said Silvertip. “And he’s a grand horse. No wonder you’re proud of him, Charlie. He’s the finest for his weight that I ever saw. Just for a minute I almost thought — well, no matter about that.”

He broke off with a sigh, and his eyes went regretfully back toward the stallion.

“You thought what? You almost thought what?” asked Moore eagerly. “You thought almost that he would be the horse for
you
, Silver? Ain’t that what you almost thought? Try him, Silver, and maybe he
is
the horse for you. If he is, you can have him. I’ll give him up. It’d be better to me than ownin’ him to think of you and him out together, like a coupla kings, like a coupla hawks flyin’ over the mountains. You try him, and if he
is
your horse, you can have him. It’d do me good, day and night, to think of you two together.”

The hand of Silvertip rested again on the shoulder of Moore, and his glance went deeply into the face of the cowpuncher, for an instant.

“You’re a kind fellow, Charlie,” he said. “One of these days I’m afraid that you’ll give away your heart and soul — because you’ll find somebody else who could use ’em!”

“About givin’ Brandy away,” said Richmond angrily, “that’s a kind of a joke, ain’t it? Or maybe I don’t own half of him.”

The quiet eyes, the quiet voice of Silvertip turned toward Richmond, as he answered: “I can buy your half of the horse, Richmond. A half interest is only worth six months of Charlie’s pay, isn’t it? That’s the top price that I heard you put on him.”

A hot retort swelled the throat of Richmond, and died in it. For suddenly he knew, not by reputation only, that this man was dangerous.

“I’ll get a saddle on Brandy. You try him,” Moore was saying.

So saddle and bridle were put on the stallion, Brandy opening his mouth for the bit as though it were a thing to eat. Then Silvertip mounted, sliding into the saddle as though he were stepping onto the back of a pony. This man made all things seem small and easy.

Afterward, he rode Brandy out of the corral, down into the hollow, jumped the dry ditch there, and brought the horse swinging back. Charlie Moore was white with eagerness and questions when the big man dismounted. A gentle consideration appeared in the face of Silver as he regarded Moore.