Stolen Stallion (8 page)

P
ARADE, WITHDREW FROM THE REACH OF THE ROPE,
blundered only a few steps before he lay down beneath a tree. He saw the man come a few uncertain, wavering steps after him, then sink to the ground in turn. The thicker night, more perfect in silence, drew over them, with stars in the heaven above them, and more brightly in the water at their side.

Still the two rested, motionless, like two heroes of some legendary combat who have battled together from dawn to midday, and in the heat withdraw from one another a little and lie down to rest, by mutual consent, well knowing that they will soon rise again and join the struggle once more.

The man lay on his face, his head pillowed in his arms. Parade could see that, and something out of the human face spoke to him continually through the dark of the night. Eyes were on Parade, passing through his body, it seemed, and finding the spirit within. He could not believe that he was actually lying there, prone and passive, while the Great Enemy, personified in one man, lay near by, a danger ready to spring. Yet the agony of weariness controlled him. The eyes of Parade closed, and his mind wandered in sleep, constantly broken as his eyes winked open again and again.

He heard a sound of regular, loud breathing from the Great Enemy. Sometimes it seemed to him that the man was gathering, and rising to his feet; and again, as he jerked his own head high, it seemed to Parade that the Great Enemy was merely sleeping.

There was enough of the savage beast in Parade to make him think of lurching to his feet and charging that frail body. One stroke of a forehoof should be enough to shatter the life in it. And there was not the formidable scent of iron and gunpowder, warning him away. But Mischief had always declared that there is in man a mystery of power, incomprehensible and vast, so that, for all his fragility, the Great Enemy is always dangerous. Moreover, in the heart of Parade there was welling a strange sense of fear, and something that was different from fear.

It was like that emotion which comes between day and night, or between night and morning; it was like standing on a high hill and looking at a new country. There was the sense of something infinite, and infinitely worth exploring.

The hours went by like a swift river. The mountains began to darken in the east, and Parade knew that the day was coming. He got to his feet, with an effort. There was no returning down the length of Salt Creek, he knew, because of the fluid weakness which coursed through him. One more day without water would be the end of him, in his condition. There remained only one way, and that was ahead, up the trail that wound dimly into the higher mountains; for he was now at the very head of Salt Creek.

Would the man rise, also?

Yes, Parade had hardly made three steps when Silvertip stirred, groaned, and then rose to his feet, and stood swaying.

He drank from the pool again, put something from a pocket into his mouth, and stepped out limping on the trail of the stallion. It seemed to Parade that it would always be like this — that, as he struggled through the world, this two legged creature would follow him, with the snaky rope in his hand.

More hope came to the horse when he found that he had regained some of his lost strength after water and rest. He struck forward at a trot. The ground lifted. He wound rapidly up and up through a maze of rocks. Before him, above him, the sun struck on polished boulders never been able to accomplish what this Great Enemy had and flamed on the blue-white ice of the summits, half lost in the sky.

There was another land beyond those peaks, and Mischief had told him of it. The passes were narrow and dangerous, but if he could get through them, he would come out into a green world, and his strength would soon return to him and his limbs be robed with power, as before. All of those men who had striven to catch him had done — drive him at last out of the hot fastnesses of the Sierra Blanca.

As he climbed, he had many a glimpse behind and beneath him of the lower country. He could see the whole course of Salt Creek winding away toward the open desert. Through that crystal morning he could make out small forms; and, in a valley close to Salt Creek, two horsemen were striking in toward the mountains.

Well for Parade that he had met no horsemen during these last terrible days! They could have run him down in a moment, and ensnared him with their ropes.

He seemed to have climbed, now, into the heart of the dawn itself, and the morning light was seeping down from the higher levels over a darker earth beneath. Then the sun itself poured over him like a warm liquid.

He stood out on a projecting point, for an instant. It was like the prow of a ship, and he, as the lookout, stared far away through the sea of mountains. He had risen, now, to the level of the snow. A gray bank of it lay along the ledge, at one side. Beneath the stunted pines there were bits and sparklings of it. It was the first promise of the region of wind and ice that lay above him.

Then the Great Enemy came up around the bend below. He had a stick in his hand, and leaned some of his weight on it. He climbed stolidly, with slow steps, his head swaying a little from side to side. A sort of angry despair came over the stallion, made him toss up his head, and brought a trumpet-sounding neigh from his throat. The violence of his call made his knees tremble. But the man did not even look up. He came on, slowly, steadily, step after step, as remorseless as time.

Parade turned and fled as fast as he could up the next rise. He looked back. The rocks had blotted out the form of the man, but, of course, he would be coming. Like a wolf, he seemed to have a nose that told him the way, and the fear of the stallion grew into a blind panic that scourged him wildly forward.

He gained a height. He fled down a steep-sided hollow. He rushed the rising ground beyond, and found himself trembling and already exhausted on the bitter upward slope that seemed to have no ending. Far beneath him, he saw the man coming, plodding with the stick, head down, swaying slightly from side to side!

There was no wind on these heights, though usually the storms must have flowed like invisible rivers, to judge from the manner in which trees were blown back at timber line. And immediately above was the white world of the snow. Later in the year it would shrink upward and upward, until there were glistening caps on only a few of the loftiest peaks, but now the mountains were drowned in it, and the passes choked. A crunching and squeaking sound kept coming from the pressure of his hoofs on the snow crystals.

It was slow going. There were few levels; it was always up and down, with need to step like a cat for fear a false step on the treacherous snow would hurl him over the lip of some vast canyon.

It was a new world. A mountain sheep, almost as big as a pony, ran across the path of the stallion and hurled itself over the edge of a cliff — to be dashed to pieces beneath, it seemed! But no, it was caroming from side to side of a narrow crevice, seeming to strike on its head at the bottom of every jump, rebounding sidewise and ever downward like a great rubber ball.

The horse, eying that descent, felt suddenly weak and helpless. Then the snow before him became alive, and white ptarmigans rose on purring wings and shot away in a long, low flight, arrowy fast.

All creatures here were new, and their newness brought home to the stallion a sense of doom. To be in such a fantastic world was almost like being dead.

And the man? He was still coming. Step after step, at the unvarying rhythm, he climbed the steep way, and the footmarks which he left behind were spots of his own crimson blood. The stippled trail moved far away behind him before it dipped out of sight. The wind blew softly from that direction, and the stallion distinctly smelled the freshness of new blood.

Another panic overcame him, at that. Slipping, sliding, groaning with fear, he rushed along the narrow trail, regardless of the thousand-foot gulf at his left, and so came out on a small platform of rock, slicked over with an incrustation of ice. Here all progress stopped. At the right, the cliff went upward at the pitch of a rising heron. At the left was the gulf. And across the ledge on which the horse had been traveling had spilled a mass of snow, mixed with ponderous boulders of ice. The sun shone full on this trap, dazzling the eyes of Parade.

He turned. He knew that the time for the final battle had come, and already he was eying the gorge at his side. Better to die there, he felt, than to pass into the mysterious hands of the enslaver, Man. He imagined the outward spring, the downward rush, the cold sweeping of wind against his belly. Perhaps he would begin to turn over and over, like a great stone. Then one last crushing blow, and life would be over.

Around the corner of the icy rock stepped the Great Enemy, and confronted him, leaning on the staff. Parade lifted his head, and sent a great neigh, a death cry, ringing through the echoing mountains. Far below, across the canyon, and on a different trail, two riders with clipped hair and close-clipped beards heard the call, and looking up, saw, in part, what happened.

T
HE SNAKY SHADOW OF THE ROPE WAS DEPLOYING IN THE
hand of the Great Enemy. It slid out through the air, and hovered an instant. The stallion, trying to dodge, almost shot his weight off the slippery rock and into the abyss. As Parade regained his feet, he felt the noose whip home with a burning touch about his neck. It closed up on his windpipe. It was a cruel hand that relentlessly throttled him.

There was no chance for flight, or for pulling free. Parade did the next possible thing — he charged straight home!

Before him, he saw the man shrink aside, and the way of escape opened. Then the burly wooden staff whirled, a blur of speed before the eyes of Parade.

The blow took him between the ears and knocked him to his knees. He was at the very feet of the Great Enemy. The smell of the blood from them was a stench in his nostrils; the scent of the body of the man was terribly near; and, above all, the voice of man was ringing out at his ears, in savage victory.

Parade shrank back as he came to his knees. A loop of the rope whipped under a forefoot. He barely managed to disengage the hoof before it was jerked up toward his throat.

Again the two faced one another. Laughter came out of the throat of Man, laughter, detestable to all animals, because it is a sound which otherwise has no existence in nature. The whole mind and difference of man is expressed in that half-gasping and half-singing noise.

And seeing the Great Enemy shaken for the moment, Parade charged again. He came with teeth bared, ears flattened, his head thrust out like the head of a snake. The club whirled up. He dodged. Instantly his feet shot out from beneath him. His whole body skidded over the ice-polishedrock. Beneath him was the dreadful, empty glimpse of the chasm, the white dance of water that foamed through the bottom of the ravine.

With his forehoofs, as a cat with paw and claw, the stallion clung to the verge of the cliff. His hind legs, reaching frantically upward, struck at the massed ice that underlay the ledge and knocked it away in great chunks. Then his forehoofs began to slide slowly outward.

He stopped struggling. The shuddering cold of death was already in him. And then Man leaned above him, reaching far down. The smell of blood was ranker than ever in the nostrils of Parade. The ragged clothes of the Great Enemy brushed his face, and the dust of Salt Creek filled the nostrils of the horse. It would be easy, now, to seize one of those fragile hands and crush the bone in his teeth — but miracles were happening!

Of all the mysteries of man, his hands are the most wonderful. It is they which work with fire; it is they which use iron and gunpowder; but now the hands of the Great Enemy had laid mighty hold upon the noose that encircled the neck of Parade.

Man was lifting with a power incredible in so small a thing. Man was swaying back, every instant in danger of losing his foothold and slipping out into the void. Man was pulling with such a force that the forehoofs of the horse no longer slipped outward, but worked in to gain a better grip.

The rear hoofs struck up to gain some purchase on the under ice, below the ledge. Again those striking feet merely managed to knock away great lumps. Utter despair came upon Parade. Not even the miraculous hands of Man could save him.

But Man still struggled. It was plain that the Great Enemy was risking life to save life. And how could that be true? Yet he remained there on the brink of death for them both, tugging, straining; and out of the throat of Man came new sounds, never heard before.

Man is a whooping, yelling monster. He rides horses at frantic speed, goring their flanks with terrible spurs. Man yells, in a voice that strikes through the mind like a stone through thin ice. But this time Man was speaking in a tone of sympathy and encouragement as plainly decipherable as ever was the soft whinny of a mare to its foal. Groaningly the words came out, forced and strained by the physical effort that accompanied them.

New strength came into Parade; despair left him. With head and forelegs he pressed down on the rock; his struggling hind legs beat upward until one of them found an instant’s lodgment.

That instant was enough. The pull of the man was greater than ever. Parade swayed upward; his whole body trembled for an instant in the crisis of the strain; then he lurched forward onto the safety of the little platform.

The man staggered back before him, without ever letting go the rope which encircled the throat of Parade. And the face of Man was horrible. Out of his distended jaws came the hoarse, panting breath of exhaustion. His breast heaved in and out against the very muzzle of Parade. His eyes glared, bloodstained as those of a beast of prey. His whole body swayed with weakness, and the magic hands which had saved the stallion now quivered as they retained their grasp on the noose.

There was an equal weakness in Parade. Only the wide bracing of his legs sustained him, for the time being. Then, gradually, power returned. Out of the haze of exhaustion he recovered, to realize more fully how he was bound to the man.

What he had felt the night before returned to him. He had then been on the verge, as it were, of a vast, undiscovered country, and now he felt that he was in the midst of it. The mere crossing of mountains could not be to him what this moment with the Great Enemy had meant.

He had been struck to his knees — such was the force of the magic of this puny creature — and then he had been drawn from the brink of death.

Now the hands of Man left the rope and passed upward along the soft under parts of his throat, and came over the tense muscles of the jaw, and moved with infinite delicacy across the face of Parade.

He stood entranced, for electric happiness flowed out of that touch, and the voice of Man, recommencing, made through the soul of the stallion such echoes as sing and murmur quietly down the ravine of a small mountain brook.

Danger, and starvation, and long labor, and the torments of heat and cold were forgotten; but fear, most of all, was the ghost that disappeared in this new sunshine of understanding. Years of quiet living cannot reveal our friends to us as can the cruel light of one moment of danger and need. Then the many fail, and the one is found, and to have such a one is better than all the throngs. There is no bitterness like full knowledge, and there is no such glorious happiness. And one friend is the bread of life, if his friendship has been proved.

The wisdom of the old mare, his mother, had been to the stallion a profound thing. Suddenly it shrank. It became obscure and worthless, compared with this new knowledge.

The hand of Man was laid across his forehead, then both hands blinded his eyes. But he stood without a jerk of the head, without a tremor of the body. Into the darkness of that moment, Parade was pouring his faith and his trust that no harm would come.

He heard joy come bubbling like spring water out of the throat of Man, and the flow of it invaded his own being. The hands were removed. He looked with his unblinded eyes, curiously, with only a faint comprehension, into the face of Man. And the dead centuries worked in the blood of Parade, surely — all the generations through which his race had served Man, the master, and had known Man, the friend.

The Great Enemy drew back, and pulled gently at the rope. Parade drew back against the weight. And Man stood beside him, now, softly pressing forward on the noose until Parade yielded to the pressure.

There was no harm in that. There was no harm, surely, in walking with his head at the shoulder of Man, while the voice made music in his ears.

Mischief had said that in time even some of the sounds of the voice of Man can take on a definite meaning. Parade wondered if that time would ever come for him. Even as it was, the speech had a meaning of contentment.

They went on slowly down the icy way. Parade slipped. The hand of Man, strongly sustaining, steadied him again. A little later, Man slipped in turn, and the full weight of his body dragged down against the rope until he was in balance once more.

The ears of Parade pricked forward. He was walking, not on rock and snow and ice, but into a country of the spirit, where every step was a marvel beyond calculation.

They wound down out of the region of white snow. They passed the distorted willows and aspens of the timber line that stretched like a dark water mark, level and straight, along the sides of the mountains. They came to the kinder going beneath, and where a small dale opened, there the Great Enemy made a pause.

Deep, rich grass grew here, but Parade was regardless of it, watching the face of Man as a child watches the face of a summer sky. And Man plucked a handful of the grass, and offered it at the lips of Parade. Curiously he sniffed at it. The taint of the flesh of Man was on it, yet he gathered a little under his prehensile upper lip. The taste was not spoiled. He ate, suddenly, with eagerness. Again and again that hand was filled, and again and again Parade took the grass from it. Then handfuls of seeded grass, carefully chosen; richer food than ever Parade had been able to sort for himself.

They remained there for more than an hour, and during that hour, the voice of Man would speak, and then the silence of the wilderness would flow gently in upon them, and unutterable peace began to steal like happy sleep over the stallion.

Far away, he saw two riders moving. But what of that? He would have fled, if he had been alone, but now he was with a mighty companion, stronger than all other men, more patient than time, more enduring than heat or cold. If other men came, they were his lesser fellows, like colts in a herd to the great wild stallion that rules it.

Presently, the riders were no longer in view, but two men on foot moved carefully among the rocks and shrubbery, obviously stalking, and coming straight in the direction of Man, the Great Enemy!

This was strange! But all-knowing Man would surely know this.

Perhaps it was a game, as when colts play together in the happy summer of the year.

Then one man was kneeling, and the long line of light that ran down the barrel of a rifle narrowed and shortened to a single winking eye of light.

Well did the stallion know guns, and now he started violently, throwing up his head, staring in the direction of that new danger.

Man arose, also, and turned, and as he turned, an audible blow struck his head and knocked him flat on his back. A thin mist had appeared around the mouth of the rifle, and now the report clanged softly against the ears of the stallion, coming vaguely through the thin mountain air.

Parade looked down. Red covered the head, red streaked the face of Man. He lay with his arms outstretched, and his eyes partially open, and a smile was on his lips. The hot, thick, sweet scent of blood filled the nostrils of Parade.

He stared toward the place from which the shot had been fired, but now there was nothing to be seen of the two men.

Parade lowered his head, and sniffed at the face of the fallen man. There was no response. He stamped. It brought no answer, though sand flew from the stamping of the hoof into the face of the Great Enemy.

A moment later, a shadow crossed near by. Parade, tossing up his head, was in time to see one of the strangers snatch up the end of the fallen rope and snub it around the point of a boulder. And Parade himself, rushing off at a gallop, came to the end of that line only to be flung heavily on his side.

He lay senseless for a moment. Meantime, both of the men were leaning over Silvertip.

“You got him, Chuck,” said one of them. “You got him good, too. Right through the bean, old son.”

“He’s goin’ to bump off the gent that takes the scalp of Parade,” answered Chuck. “But he won’t be doin’ no bumpin’ no more. Get your rope on that hoss, Lefty. He’s goin’ to raise the devil when he gets to his feet again. Shall we roll Silvertip down into the ravine?”

“Leave him be,” answered Lefty. “The buzzards’ll spoil his looks so’s nobody would know him. In half a day, they’ll spoil him.”