Max Brand – The Complete Collection

Chapter 14

Down the road she jockeyed the mare at the top of her pace with the barbed wire running in three dim streaks of light on either side until at last she struck the edge of the desert. The moon was now well above the horizon and the sands rolled in dun levels and black hollows over which she could peer for a considerable distance. Still there was no sight of her cowpunchers and this was a matter of small wonder, for a ten minute start had sent them far away ahead of her.

It would never do to push ahead with a blind energy. Already the bay was beginning to feel the run, and Marianne reluctantly drew down to the long lope which is the favorite gait of the cowpony. At this pace she rocked on over mile after mile of desert through the moonhaze, but never a token of the cowpunchers came on her. Twice she was on the verge of turning back; twice she shook her head and urged the mare on again. Hour upon hour had slipped by her. Perhaps Hervey long since had given up the chase and turned towards the ranch. In the meantime, so much alike was all the ground she covered that she seemed to be riding on a treadmill but yet she could not return.

The moon floated higher and higher as the night grew old and at length there was a dim lightening in the east which foretold dawn, but Marianne kept on. If she lost the mares it would be very much like losing her last claim to the respect of her father. She could see him, in prospect, shrug his shoulders and roll another cigarette; above all she could see Lew Hervey smile with a suppressed wisdom. Both of them had, from the first, not only disapproved of the long price of the Coles horses, but of their long legs as well and their "damned high heads." She had kept telling herself fiercely that before long, when the mares were used to mountain ways and trails, she would ride one of them against the pick of Hervey's saddle ponies and at the end of a day he would know how much blood counts in horse flesh! But if that chance were lost to her with the mares themselves--she did not know where she could find the courage to go back and face the people at the ranch. Meantime the dawn grew slowly in the east but even when the mountains were huge and black against flaming colors of the horizon sky, there was no breaking of Marianne's gloom. Now and then, hopelessly, she raised her field glasses and swept a segment of the compass. But it was an automatic act, and her own forecast of failure obscured her vision, until at last, saddle-racked, trembling with weariness and grief, she stopped the mare. She was beaten!

She had turned the bay towards the home-trail when something subconsciously noted made her glance over her shoulder. And she saw them! She needed no glass to bring them close. Those six small forms moving over the distant hill could be nothing else, but if she doubted, all room for doubt was instantly removed, for in a moment a group of horsemen passed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them, after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. God bless Lew Hervey for this good work!

Even the bay seemed to recover her spirit at the sight. She had picked up her head before she felt the rein of the mistress and now she answered the first word by swinging into a brisk gallop that overhauled the others swiftly. How the eyes of Marianne feasted on the reclaimed truants! They danced along gaily, their slender bodies shining with sweat in the light of the early day, and Lady Mary mincing in the lead. A moment later, Marianne was among her cowpunchers.

They were stolid as ever but she knew them well enough to understand by the smiles they interchanged, that they were intensely pleased with their work of the night. Then she found herself crying to Hervey: "You're wonderful! Simply wonderful! How could you have followed them so far and found them in the night?"

At that, of course, Hervey became exceedingly matter of fact. He spoke as though the explanation were self-evident.

"They busted away in a straight line," he said, "so I knew by that that something was leading 'em. Them bays ain't got sense enough of their own to run so straight." She noted the slur without anger. "Well, what was leading 'em must of been what let 'em out of the corral; and what let 'em out of the corral--"

"Horse thieves!" cried Marianne, but Hervey observed her without interest.

"Hoss stealing ain't popular around these parts for some time," he said. "Rustle a cow, now and then, but they don't aim no higher--not since we strung Josh Sinclair to the cottonwood. Nope, they was stole, but not by a man."

Here he made a tantalizing pause to roll a cigarette with Marianne exclaiming: "If not a man, then what on earth, Mr. Hervey?"

He puffed out his answer with the first big cloud of smoke: "By another hoss! I guessed it right off. Remember what I said last night about the chestnut stallion and the bad luck he put on my gun?"

She recalled vividly how Hervey, with the utmost solemnity, had avowed that the leader of the mustangs put "bad luck" on his bullets and that they had not seen the last of the horse. She dared not trust herself to answer Lew but glanced at the other men to see if they were not smiling at their foreman's absurd idea; they were as grave as images.

"The chestnut wanted to get back at us for killing his herd off," went on Hervey. "So he sneaks up to the ranch and opens the corral gate and takes the mares out. When I seen the mares were traveling so straight as all that I guessed what was up. Well, if the hoss was leading 'em, where would he take 'em? Straight to water. They was no use trying to run down them long-legged gallopers. I took a swing off to the right and headed for Warner's Tank. Sure enough, when we got there we seen the mares spread out and the chestnut and the grey mare hanging around."

He paused again and looked sternly at Slim, and Slim flushed to the eyes and glared straight ahead.

"Slim, here, had been saying maybe it was my bum shooting and not the bad luck the stallion put on my rifle that made me miss. So I give him the job of plugging the hoss. Well, he tried and missed three times. Off goes the grey and the chestnut like a streak the first crack out of the box, but we got ahead of the mares and turned 'em. And here we are. That's all they was to it. But," he added gravely, "we ain't seen the last of that chestnut hoss, Miss Jordan."

"I guess hardly another man on the range could have trailed them so well," she said gratefully. "But this wild horse--do you really think he'll try to steal our mares again?"

"Think? I know! And the next time we won't get 'em back so plumb easy. Right this morning, if they'd got started quick enough when he give 'em the signal, we'd never of headed 'em. But they ain't turned wild yet; they ain't used to his ways. Give him another whirl with them and they'll belong to him for good. Ain't no hosses around these parts can run them mares down!"

She heard the tribute with a smile of pleasure and ran satisfied glances over the six beauties which cantered or trotted before them.

"But even wild things are captured," she argued. "Even deer are caught. If the chestnut did run off the mares again why couldn't--"

Hervey interrupted dryly: "Down Concord way, Jess Rankin was pestered by a black mustang. Jess was a pretty tolerable fair hunter, knowed mustangs and mustang-ways, and had a right fine string of saddle hosses. Well, it took Jess four years of hard work to get the black. Up by Mexico Creek, Bud Wilkinson had a grey stallion that run amuck on his range. Took Bud nigh onto five years to get the grey. Well, I seen both the grey and the black, and I helped run 'em a couple of times. Well, Miss Jordan, when it come to running, neither of 'em was one-two-three beside this chestnut, and if it took five years to get in rifle range of 'em for a good shot, it'll take ten to get the chestnut. That's the way I figure!"

And as he ended, his companions nodded soberly.

"Plumb streak of light," they said. "Just nacheral crazy fool when it comes to running, that hoss is!"

And Marianne, for the first time truly appreciating how great was the danger from which the mares had been saved, sighed as she looked them over again, one by one. It had been a double triumph, this night's work. Not only were the mares retaken, but they had proved their speed and staying powers conclusively in the long run over the desert. Hervey himself began hinting, as they rode on, that he would like "to clap a saddle on that Lady Mary hoss, one of these days." In truth, her purchase was vindicated completely and Marianne fell into a happy dream of a ranch stocked with saddle horses all drawn from the blood of these neat-footed mares. With such horses to offer, she could pick and cull among the best "punchers" in the West.

Into the dream, appropriately enough, ran the neigh of a horse, long drawn and shrill of pitch, interrupted by a sudden burst of deep-throated curses from the riders. The six mares had come to a halt with their beautiful heads raised to listen, and on a far-off hill, Mary saw the signaler--a chestnut horse gleaming red in the morning light.

"It's him!" shouted Hervey. "The nervy devil has come back to give us a look. Shorty, take a crack at him!"

For that matter, every man in the party was whipping his rifle out of its holster as Mary raised her field glass hurriedly to study the stranger. She focused on him clearly at once and it was a startling thing to see the distant figure shoot suddenly close to her, distinct in every detail, and every detail an item of perfect beauty. She gasped her admiration and astonishment; mustang he might be, but the short line of the back above and the long line below, the deep set of the shoulders, the length of neck, the Arab perfection of head, would have allowed him to pass unquestioned muster among a group of thoroughbreds, and a picked group at that. He turned, at that instant, and galloped a short distance along the crest, neighing again, and then paused like an expectant dog, with one forefoot raised, a white-stockinged forefoot. Marianne gripped the glass hard and then dropped it. By the liquid smoothness of that gallop, by the white-stockinged forefoot, by something about his head, and above all by what she knew of his cunning, she had recognized Alcatraz. And where, in the first glimpse, she had been about to warn the men not to shoot this peerless beauty, she now dropped the glass with the memory of the trampling of Manuel Cordova rushing back across her mind.

"It's Alcatraz!" she cried. "It's that chestnut I told you of at Glosterville, Mr. Hervey. Oh, shoot and shoot to kill. He's a murderer-- not a horse!"

That injunction was not needed. The rifle spoke from the shoulder of Shorty, but the stallion neither fell nor fled, and his challenging neigh rang faintly down to them.