by Andre Norton
"Sit down--" Rennie nodded to the seat in front of the table. "Smoke?" He pushed forward a silver box holding the long cigarillos of the border country. Drew shook his head.
"Whisky? Wine?" He gestured to a tray with waiting glasses.
"Sherry." Drew automatically answered without thought.
"What do you think of the stock you saw down in the corral?" _Don_ Cazar poured a honey-colored liquid from the decanter into a small glass.
As the Kentuckian raised it to sip, the scent of the wine quirked time for him, making this for a fleeting moment the dining room at Red Springs during a customary after-dinner gathering of the men of the household. The talk there, too, had been of horses--always horses. Then Drew came back in a twitch of eyelid to the here and now, to Hunt Rennie watching him with a measuring he did not relish, to Bartolom's round face with its close-to-hostile expression. Deliberately Drew sipped again before answering the question.
"I'd say, suh, if they're but a sample of Range stock, the breed is excellent. However----"
"However what, _seor_?" Bartolom's eyes challenged Drew. "In this territory, even in Sonora, there are none to compare with the horses of this hacienda."
"That is not what I was about to say, _Seor_ Rivas. But if _Don_ Cazar wishes to try the eastern methods of training, these horses are too old. You begin with a yearling colt, not three-year-olds."
"To break a foal! What madness!" Now Bartolom's face expressed shock.
"Not breaking," Drew corrected, "training. It is another method altogether. One puts a weanling on a rope halter, accustoms him to the feel of the hackamore, of being with men. Then he grows older knowing no fear or strangeness."
The Mexican looked from Drew to _Don_ Cazar, his shock fading to puzzlement. Rennie nodded.
"_S, amigo_, so it is done--in Kentucky and Virginia. But this time we must deal with the older ones. Can you modify those methods, gentle without breaking? A colt with the fire still in him, but saddle-broke, is worth much more--"
"I can try. But you have already said, suh, that you don't allow rough breakin' here." Drew's half suspicion crystallized into belief. _Don_ Cazar had not really wanted another wrangler at all; he had wanted Shiloh--and his foals. Well, perhaps he would find he did have a wrangler who could deliver the goods into the bargain.
"No, but it is always well to learn new ways. I have been in Kentucky, Kirby. Perhaps some of their methods would not work on the Range. On the other hand, others might. As you have said--we can but try." He picked up the top sheet of paper and began to read:
"_Bayos-blancos_--light duns--two. _Bayos-azafranados_--saffrons--one. _Bayos-narajados_--orange duns--none----"
"There was one," Bartolom interrupted. "The mare, she was lost at Caon del Palomas."
Rennie frowned, "_S_, the mare. _Bayos-tigres_--striped ones --three. _Bayos-cebrunos_--smoked duns--two. _Grullas_--blues--four. Roans--six. Blacks--three. Bays--four. Twenty-five three-year-olds. You won't be expected to take on the whole _remuda_, Kirby. Select any six of your own choosing and use your methods of gentling on them. We'll make a test this way."
Bartolom uttered a sound closer to a snort than anything else. And Drew guessed how he stood with the Mexican foreman. Rennie might have faith, or pretend to have faith, in some new method of training, but Rivas was a conservative who preferred the tried and true and undoubtedly considered the Kentuckian an interloper.
"Now, the matter of Shiloh..."
Drew finished the sherry with appreciation. He was beginning to see the amusing side of this conference. Drew's work on the Range settled, Rennie was about to get to what he really wanted. But _Don_ Cazar's first words were a little startling.
"We'll keep him close-in the water corral. To turn a stud of eastern breeding loose is dangerous----"
"You mean he might be stolen, suh?" Drew clicked his empty glass down on the table.
"No, he might be killed!" And Rennie's tone indicated he meant just that.
"How...why?"
"There are wild-horse bands out there, though we're trying to capture or run them off the Range. And a wild stud will always try to add mares to his band. Because he has fought many times to keep or take mares, he is a formidable and vicious opponent, one that an imported, tamed stud can rarely best. Right now, coming into Big Rock well for water is a pinto that has killed three other stallions--including a black I imported back in '60--and two of them were larger, heavier animals than he.
"The Trinfans are moving down into that section this week. I hope they can break up that band, run down the stud anyway. He has courage and cunning, but his blood is not a line we want for foals on this range. So Shiloh stays here at the Stronghold; don't risk him loose."
"Yes, suh. What about these wild ones--they worth huntin'?"
"They're mixed; some are scrubs, inbred, poor stuff. But a few fine ones turn up. Mostly when they do they're strays or bred from strays--escaped from horse thieves or Indians. If the mustangers here pick up any branded ones, they're returned to the owners, if possible, or sold at a yearly auction. By the old Mexican law the hunting season for horses runs from October to March. Foals are old enough then to be branded. Speaking of foals, you left your mare and the filly in town?"
"Kells'll give them stable room till next month. I can bring them out then."
"We'll have a delivery of remounts to make to the camp about then. You can help haze those in and pick up your own stock on return."
Len appeared in the doorway. "_Don_ Cazar, the _mesteneoes_--they arrive."
"Good. These people are the real wild-horse experts, Kirby. Not much the Trinfans don't know about horses." _Don_ Cazar was already on his way to the door and Drew fell in behind Bartolom.
The Trinfan outfit was small, considering the job they intended, Drew thought. A cart pulled by two mules, lightly made and packed high, was the nucleus of their small caravan. Burros--two of them--were roped behind and, to Drew's surprise, a cow, bawling fretfully and intended, he later learned, to play foster mother to any unweaned foals which might be picked up. The cart was driven by a Mexican in leather breeches and jacket over a red shirt. Behind him rode the boy and girl Drew had seen in the Tubacca alley, mounted on rangy, nervous horses that had speed in every line of their under-fleshed bodies. Each rider trailed four spare mounts roped nose to tail.
"_Buenos das, Don_ Cazar." For so small a man the Mexican on the cart seat produced a trumpet-sized voice. He touched the roll-edged brim of his sombrero, and Drew noted that his arm was crooked as if in the past it had been broken and poorly set.
"_Buenos dias, Seor_ Trinfan. This house is yours." Rennie went to the side of the cart. "The west corral is ready for your use as always. Draw on the stores for any need you may have--"
"_Gracias, Don_ Cazar." It was the thanks of equal to equal. "You have some late news of the wild ones?"
"Only that the pinto still runs near the well."
"That spotted one--_s_, he is an Apache for cunning, for deviltry of spirit. It may be that this time he will not be the lucky one. There is in him a demon. Did I not see him, with my own eyes, kill a foal, tear flesh from the flanks of its dam when she tried to drop out of the run? _S_--a real _diablo_, that one!"
"Get rid of him one way or another, Trinfan. He is a danger to the Range. He killed another stud this season. I am as sure of that as if I had seen him in action."
"Ah, the blue one you thought might be a runner to match Oro. _S_, that was a great pity, _Don_ Cazar. Well, we shall try, we shall try this time to put that _diablo_ under!"
An hour later Drew was facing a _diablo_ of his own, with far less confidence than Hilario Trinfan had voiced. Just how stupid could one be? Around him now were men trained from early childhood to this life, and he could show no skill at their employment. All the way out from Texas he had practiced doggedly with the lariat, and his best fell far short of what a range-bred child could do.
Yet he had an audience waiting down at the corral. Drew's mouth was a
straight line. He would soon confirm their belief that _Don_ Cazar had in truth hired Shiloh instead of his owner. But there was no use trying to duck the ordeal, and the Kentuckian had never been one to put off the inevitable with a pallid hope that something would turn up to save him.
Only this time, apparently, fortune was going to favor him.
"Which one you wish, _seor?_" Teodoro Trinfan, rope in hand, stood there ready to cast for one of the milling colts. Why the boy was making that offer of assistance Drew had no inkling. But to accept would give him a slight chance to prove he could do part of the work.
He had already made his selection in the corral, though he had despaired of ever getting that animal at rope's end.
"The black--"
6
He worked in the dust of the smaller corral, with Croaker's help, adapting his knowledge of eastern gentling the way he had mentally planned it during the days since he had accepted the job. With the excited and frightened colt roped to the steady mule Drew tried to think horse, feel horse, even be horse, shutting out all the rest of the world just as he had on the day of the race. He must sense the colt's terror of the rope, his horror of the strange human smell--the man odor which was so frightening that a blanket hung up at a water hole could keep wild horses away from the liquid they craved.
Drew talked as he had to Shiloh, as if this black could understand every word. He twitched the lead rope, and Croaker paced sedately about in a wide circle, dragging the colt with him. Drew then reached across the bony back of the mule, pressed his hand up and down the sweaty, shivering hide of the black. No hurry, must not rush the steady, mild gesture to the horse that here was a friend.
The Kentuckian had no idea of the passing of time; it was all part of the knowledge that slow movements, not swift ones, would prevent new panic. The blanket was shown, allowing the black to sniff down its surface, before it was flapped back and forth across the colt's back, and finally left there. Now the saddle. And with that cinched into place, the black stood quietly beside Croaker.
Drew mounted the mule and rode. The saddled black, loosened from the twin tie, followed the mule twice around the corral. The rider dismounted from Croaker, was up on the black. For perilous seconds he felt flesh and muscles tense under his weight; then the body relaxed.
His hand went up. "Open the gate!" he called softly.
Seeming to realize he was free of the pole walls, the black exploded in a burst of speed which was close to Shiloh's racing spurt. Drew let him go. Three-quarters of an hour later he rode back, the black blowing foam, but answering the rein.
He found _Don_ Cazar, Bartolom, and Hilario Trinfan waiting for him by the corral. The mustanger walked forward with a lurch, his head thrown far back so he could look up at Drew from under the wide brim of his sombrero.
"This you could not do with a true wild one," he commented.
"I know that, _seor_. This colt was not an enemy, one who has already been hunted by man. He was only afraid...."
"But you have the gift. It is born in one--the gift. A man has it, and the horse always knows, answers to it. Ride with me, _seor_, and try that gift on the wild ones!"
"Someday--" That was true. Someday Drew did want to ride after the wild ones. Anse's stories of horse hunting on the Texas plains had first stirred that desire. Now it was fully awake in him.
_Don_ Cazar inspected the black closely. "Well, Bartolom, what have you to say now?"
"_Seor_ Kirby knows his business," the Mexican admitted. "Though I think also that this was no true wild one. He will make a good remount, but he is no fighter such as others I have seen here."
Drew unsaddled and left the black in with Croaker; he fed both animals a bait of oats. In the morning he would be at this again. And he still had not solved the problem of roping. He could not expect Teodoro to come to his aid a second time. He started slowly back to the bunkhouse.
"_Seor_--?"
Drew raised his wet head from the bunkhouse basin and reached out for a sacking towel. "Yes?"
Len sat on a near-by bunk. "I have thought of something--"
"Sounds as if it might be important," Drew commented.
"_Don_ Cazar, he has offered money--a hundred dollars in gold--to have off the Range that killer pinto stud. But that one, he is like the Apache; he is not to be caught."
"Can't someone pick him off with a rifle?"
"Perhaps. Only that has also been tried several times, _seor_. My father, he thought he had killed him only two months ago. But the very next week did not the pinto come to steal mares from the bay _manada_? It must have been that he was only creased. No, he is a _diablo_, and he hides in the rocks where he cannot easily be seen. But there is a plan I have thought of--" Len hesitated, and Drew guessed he was about to make a suggestion which he believed might meet with disapproval.
"And this plan of yours?" Why had Len come to him with it? Surely young Rivas had better and closer friends at the Stronghold. Why approach a newcomer?
"That pinto--he is a fighter; he likes to fight. He will not allow another stud on the ground he claims."
Drew was beginning to understand. Wild ones were sometimes trapped by a belled mare staked out to draw them in. But a stud to catch a fighting stud was another plan altogether.
"You would offer him a fight?"
"_S_, but not a real fight. Just allow him to believe that there would be one. Pull him so out of hiding in the rocks--"
"Using what stud for bait?"
"_Seor_ Juanito--he said a stud that would fight too, like Shiloh."
"Shiloh!" Drew wadded the towel in his fist and pitched it across the room. "Shiloh!"
Len must have read something of Drew's blazing anger in his face, for the Mexican's mouth went a little slack and his hand came up in an involuntary gesture as if to ward off a blow.
"It is a good plan!" His boy's voice was thin in protest against Drew's expression.
"It is a harebrained, dangerous scheme," began Drew; then he switched to a question. "Did Johnny Shannon suggest using Shiloh for bait, or was that your idea?"
"_Seor_ Juanito--he said one must have a good horse, a fighter. But such a horse would not be hurt. We would wait with rifles and shoot the pinto quickly before he attacked. There would be no harm to Shiloh, none at all. _Seor_ Juanito said that. Only a trick to get the _diablo_ where we could shoot. Maybe--" Leon's eyes dropped, a flush rose slowly on his brown cheeks--"maybe it was very foolish. But when _Seor_ Juanito told it, it sounded well."
"Did he tell you to ask me about it?"
The flush darkened. "He did not say so, _seor_. But one would not do such a thing without permission. Also, you should be one of the hunters, no? How else could we go?"
"Well, there won't be any huntin' of that kind, Len. Trinfan knows what he's doin', and I don't think that pinto is goin' to be runnin' loose--or alive--much longer."
Drew pulled a clean shirt over his head. What kind of game was Johnny Shannon trying to play? Apparently he had almost talked Len into using Shiloh as bait in this fool stunt. Had he expected the kid to take the horse without Drew's knowledge? Or for some reason had he wanted Len to spill this? A trick to get Shiloh out of the Stronghold? But why?
He buckled on his gun belt, settled the twin holsters comfortably. Shannon--what and why, he repeated silently. Nothing sorted out in his mind. Drew only felt a prickle of uneasiness which began between his shoulder blades and ran a chill down his spine, as if rifle sights were on him.
But Shannon did not return to the Stronghold, and Drew was kept busy at the corrals from dawn to dusk. In a month of hard work it was easy to forget what might only be fancies.
