The Black Stallion Revolts (15 page)

When the ascent became steep McGregor brought him down to a walk again. Soon they moved through dim forest aisles no different from the mountain range to the east of the plateau, which McGregor had known with Gordon. Above him came the sound of the whistling wind through the treetops. Beyond, and ever upward, was the high country with its majestic peaks.

“Go only to the top of the timberline,” Allen had instructed him, “and in the direction you think the scream came from. If you see
his
tracks or any indication at all that he’s been there, come back and tell us. Tomorrow we’ll make up a party and go after him, providing you find anything. You’ll be able to sight everything from up there. He’ll have mares with him, so if he’s around you ought to find some indication of their movements. If not, just come back. Maybe Joe was right after all. Maybe what you heard
was
an eagle.”

No, it was a stallion he’d heard. He was certain of that. He’d swear to it. But why was he so sure?

For many long hours he climbed, and only the horse’s body working between his legs was familiar to him. He had a gun in his holster, and he supposed he’d be able to use it if he had to. But it was a strange, hanging weight at his side. On the saddle’s pommel was his lariat, and he thought he would be even more awkward using that if he needed it. His sole confidence rested in the intelligence of the horse carrying him and in his own riding ability.

The trees thinned as he neared the top of the ridge, and soon he was in high, open country. The stallion
could have been somewhere up here last night. He looked down, his eyes roving over the pine trees below and over the grazing range still farther below. He saw the far-off figures of the mares and cattle. His gaze turned to the land about him, land stripped bare of everything but dry brush and rock. It was going to be hard to find any tracks here, but he needed to see only a scratch on the weathered stone, the merest indication that a horse’s hoofs had trod here. That was all Allen wanted to know.

Even at this high altitude the air was warmed by the late afternoon sun. It was still, very still, and the great stone ramparts above him, reflecting all the gold of the sun’s rays, were blazing and glorious. He suddenly forgot to look for the tracks of a stallion. He welcomed this silent loneliness. There was no sound, only the great solitude of the upper air. He forgot Gordon and Allen, Joe and Mike. He forgot completely his recent life, the only life he remembered. For the time being he felt absolutely free and alone and secure. Nothing could be so wonderful as this, nothing so thrilling as that world which lay above him. He turned his horse away from the world below.

He climbed toward the great, glowing pinnacles without knowing why he went. His horse moved very carefully over the rugged ground, making no attempt to move faster than a slow walk. McGregor let him pick his way. He knew he must be over ten thousand feet high. He felt he could almost touch the floating cakes of snowy clouds. And above the clouds rose the highest of the peaks. Finally he entered a narrow stone aisle palisaded by tremendous cliffs of granite.

It was there he brought his horse to a stop. It was there he came to his senses, and asked himself
why
had he come? To sit his horse on top of the world? Was this his only answer?

He remembered the tracks he had been sent to look for. He remembered Allen’s orders not to go any higher than the timberline already two thousand feet below him. He had been told that beyond the crest of this range was the land of the great canyons, seldom touched and unknown. Perhaps that’s why he had come to look upon these lands, for he, too, was unknown.

Since he had come this far, he decided to go to the crest. He urged his horse on again, continuing to climb, and the cliffs closed in upon him. Finally he came to the end of the ascent, and the canyon country was there for him to see.

For a long while he gazed upon its awesome desolateness. He made out the thin ribbon of a river meandering through the deepest of all the canyons. It turned and twisted but had no movement from this height. And then his eyes, becoming more accustomed to the fading light and shadows, saw more than desolateness, and he became conscious of more than the great void and depth and space. He saw beauty in the bold domes and the gouged, gutted, uplifted rock of varied, startling colors … all reds and yellows and blues. He wiped his blurred eyes to see better and looked upon it all for a long, long time.

Finally he turned away. He had seen these lands, and now he would go back to look for hoofprints. But his gaze returned to the trail that led down the other
side of the precipice. For a thousand feet it dropped sharply before becoming lost in the highest of the canyons. It was wide enough and safe. It had been used by animals and Indians long before the white man came to this country.

He was turning his horse away from it when in the loose shale, weathered to a fine sand, he saw the tracks! He left his saddle quickly and knelt on the ground. The hoofprints were large and oval-shaped. Moreover, they were clean-cut, and had been made recently. There were two sets but each was made by the same hoofs. A horse had come up this trail, and then gone back to the canyons below. He had traveled alone. If he was the stallion Allen feared, where was his band?

McGregor got to his feet, and looked down the trail. If it was the same stallion, he wouldn’t have left his mares very far away … and never for very long. Had they moved on again, or were they in the first canyon just a thousand feet below from where he stood?

His job was to go back, and tell Allen what he had learned. He looked again at the hoofprints. So large, so perfect. He stared at them for a long while. He was drawn to them as he had been to the nocturnal scream that had brought him here. They beckoned him from dark, lost time. He had no choice but to follow them. Leading his horse, he started down the trail toward that first canyon.

If the steepness of the descent frightened his horse, the animal gave no indication of it. He followed him with no hesitation, balancing and placing his feet with great care on the loose shale. Only once did he slip,
and he drew himself quickly back on his haunches, his feet bunched together, sliding until there was a leveling off of the trail.

The worst part of the descent was behind them. The boy looked back, knowing that in a little while he’d have to retrace his steps. They’d made short work of the first five hundred feet. Going back would take longer, but would not be so difficult. The yellow walls of the first canyon were no more than another five hundred feet away.

Why had he come this far? What did he expect to find? A stallion and his band of mares. He had decided that while above. He felt certain they’d be in the canyon ahead. Then what more did he need to know? Why hadn’t he returned to the ranch?
Just to look upon them and go back?
He knew this wasn’t the answer. There was something else … something he did not understand or even try to understand … something that was making him go on, just as it had done all day. He knew only that he didn’t want to fight this impulse, and that he couldn’t turn back.

He kept going until the canyon walls hung over him. There were no hoofprints on the bare, worn rock. But ahead, about one hundred yards or so, brush-grass and sage grew. When he arrived there, he found the hoofprints again in the dry, red earth. There were many other prints beside those great perfect hoofs of the stallion. He needed no more proof than this that the stallion and his band were here.

He mounted and rode on, stopping only at a bubbling spring that gushed from beneath the walls. In the soft earth around the pool, the hoofprints were deep.
There were also the tracks of mountain lions. A strange place. He felt for his gun to make sure he still had it, and then mounted and rode into the darkening canyon. If he had looked up at the golden spires of the top walls, he would have known it was almost sunset. But his eyes were on the ground, following the hoofprints.

He first became aware that he was nearing the band by the restlessness of his mount. The horse trembled and his head came up high with dilating nostrils. The breeze in the canyon was coming toward them, bringing scents with it. McGregor raised the hand holding the reins, and his horse came to a stop.

Not far ahead there was a twist in the canyon. He could not see what lay beyond. But he knew the stallion and his mares were there, and that they could not yet be aware of his presence. He looked around, then turned his horse back, riding to a scrub cedar growing out of the rocks. He dismounted and tied his horse securely. He didn’t want him to get away.

Now he proceeded up the canyon on foot, careful to make no noise. He kept close to the high wall on his right, and finally came to the twist in the canyon. He inched forward, staying in the shadows. Just a few feet beyond was a high cleft in the wall. The trail led through this deep pass, and the ground carried the tracks of many mountain animals as well as those of horses. Through the pass he saw distant mesas and cliffs, and the endless canyons he had looked upon from above. This pass led to the far country. But the stallion and his band had not yet used it to leave the canyon.

He saw the mares at the far end of the canyon,
grazing on the brown grass. All about the band hung the great cliffs which afforded no escape from this walled fortress.
If Allen and his men had come along, the stallion and his band would no longer run free
.

But the stallion. Where was he?

McGregor went forward, and beyond the pass, going slowly and staying in the deep shadows. The mares couldn’t hear him or smell him because of the downwind. Finally he was able to distinguish their colors … bays, browns, grays, buckskins and palominos. Fifty or more of them, all sizes and kinds. Short-coupled quarter mares, lean and wiry mustangs, cow horses carrying their ranch brands, and long-limbed horses which had been used only for pleasure riding. They were all there. Some were in better physical condition than others because they had taken more readily to the wild life they had chosen, a life that had held many days without good grass and water and always constant movement.

He wondered that they stayed in this canyon, foraging on the brush-grass when they could have gone on to better grazing lands. Then he remembered Allen’s quarter mares, and knew why their leader kept them here.

“But where is the stallion?” McGregor asked himself again.

He looked for him. His gaze turned to the pool, near the end of the canyon. Several mares were there, but not their leader. If the stallion was feared by so many because of his great intelligence, why was he not aware of an intruder in the canyon? Why was he not watchful? And why did he have his band grazing in a place from which they could so easily be prevented
from escaping? The stallion’s natural instinct should have told him of the danger that threatened him and his band. Long ago his whistle of warning should have resounded through the canyon, starting his band on the move again.

A deep sense of disappointment came over McGregor. Why? Why had he expected so much more from this horse? And wasn’t what he found all to the good? Couldn’t he now return to the ranch and tell Allen of the simple job it would be to remove the marauding outlaw and his band from the range forever?

Yes, unless the stallion wasn’t in the canyon
.

McGregor’s gaze left the band for the opposite wall. He looked into the deep shadows, and suddenly his body froze. He saw
him!
The stallion was only a short distance away, and he, too, stood as motionless as a statue. They looked at each other.

Coal black. A giant horse as they’d said. But not burly. Tall and long-limbed. His great body was scarred with long running wounds that had healed only to become reopened and closed again, crisscrossed and pitiful to see. His long tail trailed to the ground and, like his mane, was thickly matted with burrs. His mouth was red-raw from thistles. His head, very small, was held high, the great eyes alert and never shifting, never leaving him for a second!

How long had the stallion been there? And why? Why had he never uttered his shrill signal of warning to his band? Now, even now, the black horse didn’t move but stood still, without thinking of escape for himself and his band!

The boy’s hands clutched the flesh of his thighs.
He found himself shaking, trembling. His eyes never left the stallion. Something stirred within him, and there came an inner voice from the deep, black recess of his mind. It commanded him over and over again, “
Don’t move … wait … wait.
” Even had he been able to move, he could not have denied this command.

Suddenly the black stallion stepped from the shadows into the last bit of light in the canyon. He came quickly to the boy, and stopped before him.

McGregor reached out to the stallion, and touched the raw mouth. As he did, words came to his lips that he did not understand, soft utterances that were meaningless to him. But the great stallion seemed to understand them, for he lowered his head still more.

McGregor sought release from the black barrier that kept him from knowing what had happened. His body trembled again. What were these utterances that came from the turmoil erupting within him? He had no control over what he said or did. Yet he knew he was talking to this stallion, and was being understood! He knew his hand was removing burrs from the long forelock, and that he had done all this before! He heard that inner voice again, that never-ending command, “
Wait … wait … wait.
”

For how long? How long must he wait? How long before
he would know himself?

Once this horse had been his. That much he knew. No wild outlaw would have come and stood before him, nuzzling his hand, nickering, listening. The boy accepted this without question, and asked himself only, “
When was he mine? Where? How long ago?
”

The great stallion was familiar to him. His eyes had looked upon the wedge-shaped head with the small ears before. They knew the long, thin nostrils and the wondrous gaze that was fixed on him. They knew the slender neck with its high, mounting crest … the muscled withers, the great strength of back, the chest and shoulders and legs. All these his eyes had looked upon before. Just as his hands had known such touches, soft and gentle. Only his brain was the stranger.