The Heritage of the Desert: A Novel
Page 17
a resolve to be true
to August, and to himself; bitterness he would not allow himself to
feel. And yet he feared the rising in him of a new spirit akin to that
of the desert itself, intractable and free.
"Well, Jack, we rode down the last of Silvermane's band," said August,
at supper. "The Navajos came up and helped us out. To-morrow you'll see
some fun, when we start to break Silvermane. As soon as that's done I'll
go, leaving the Indians to bring the horses down when they're broken."
"Are you going to leave Silvermane with me?" asked Jack.
"Surely. Why, in three days, if I don't lose my guess, he'll be like a
lamb. Those desert stallions can be made into the finest kind of saddle-
horses. I've seen one or two. I want you to stay up here with the sheep.
You're getting well, you'll soon be a strapping big fellow. Then when we
drive the sheep down in the fall you can begin life on the cattle
ranges, driving wild steers. There's where you'll grow lean and hard,
like an iron bar. You'll need that horse, too, my lad."
"Why--because he's fast?" queried Jack, quickly answering to the implied
suggestion.
August nodded gloomily. "I haven't the gift of revelation, but I've come
to believe Martin Cole. Holderness is building an outpost for his riders
close to Seeping Springs. He has no water. If he tries to pipe my water-
-" The pause was not a threat; it implied the Mormon's doubt of himself.
"Then Dene is on the march this way. He's driven some of Marshall's
cattle from the range next to mine. Dene got away with about a hundred
head. The barefaced robber sold them in Lund to a buying company from
Salt Lake."
"Is he openly an outlaw, a rustler?" inquired Hare.
"Everybody knows it, and he's finding White Sage and vicinity warmer
than it was. Every time he comes in he and his band shoot up things
pretty lively. Now the Mormons are slow to wrath. But they are
awakening. All the way from Salt Lake to the border outlaws have come
in. They'll never get the power on this desert that they had in the
places from which they've been driven. Men of the Holderness type are
more to be dreaded. He's a rancher, greedy, unscrupulous, but hard to
corner in dishonesty. Dene is only a bad man, a gun-fighter. He and all
his ilk will get run out of Utah. Did you ever hear of Plummer, John
Slade, Boone Helm, any of those bad men?"
"No."
"Well, they were men to fear. Plummer was a sheriff in Idaho, a man high
in the estimation of his townspeople, but he was the leader of the most
desperate band of criminals ever known in the West; and he instigated
the murder of, or killed outright, more than one hundred men. Slade was
a bad man, fatal on the draw. Helm was a killing machine. These men all
tried Utah, and had to get out. So will Dene have to get out. But I'm
afraid there'll be warm times before that happens. When you get in the
thick of it you'll appreciate Silvermane."
"I surely will. But I can't see that wild stallion with a saddle and a
bridle, eating oats like any common horse, and being led to water."
"Well, he'll come to your whistle, presently, if I'm not greatly
mistaken. You must make him love you, Jack. It can be done with any wild
creature. Be gentle, but firm. Teach him to obey the slightest touch of
rein, to stand when you throw your bridle on the ground, to come at your
whistle. Always remember this. He's a desert-bred horse; he can live on
scant browse and little water. Never break him of those best virtues in
a horse. Never feed him grain if you can find a little patch of browse;
never give him a drink till he needs it. That's one-tenth as often as a
tame horse. Some day you'll be caught in the desert, and with these
qualities of endurance Silvermane will carry you out."
Silvermane snorted defiance from the cedar corral next morning when the
Naabs, and Indians, and Hare appeared. A half-naked sinewy Navajo with a
face as changeless as a bronze mask sat astride August's blindfolded
roan, Charger. He rode bareback except for a blanket strapped upon the
horse; he carried only a long, thick halter, with a loop and a knot.
When August opened the improvised gate, with its sharp bayonet-like
branches of cedar, the Indian rode into the corral. The watchers climbed
to the knoll. Silvermane snorted a blast of fear and anger. August's
huge roan showed uneasiness; he stamped, and shook his head, as if to
rid himself of the blinders.
Into the farthest corner of densely packed cedar boughs Silvermane
pressed himself and watched. The Indian rode around the corral, circling
closer and closer, yet appearing not to see the stallion. Many rounds he
made; closer he got, and always with the same steady gait. Silvermane
left his corner and tried another. The old unwearying round brought
Charger and the Navajo close by him. Silvermane pranced out of his
thicket of boughs; he whistled; he wheeled with his shiny hoofs lifting.
In an hour the Indian was edging the outer circle of the corral, with
the stallion pivoting in the centre, ears laid back, eyes shooting
sparks, fight in every line of him. And the circle narrowed inward.
Suddenly the Navajo sent the roan at Silvermane and threw his halter. It
spread out like a lasso, and the loop went over the head of the
stallion, slipped to the knot and held fast, while the rope tightened.
Silvermane leaped up, forehoofs pawing the air, and his long shrill cry
was neither whistle, snort, nor screech, but all combined. He came down,
missing Charger with his hoofs, sliding off his haunches. The Indian,
his bronze muscles rippling, close-hauled on the rope, making half
hitches round his bony wrist.
In a whirl of dust the roan drew closer to the gray, and Silvermane
began a mad race around the corral. The roan ran with him nose to nose.
When Silvermane saw he could not shake him, he opened his jaws, rolled
back his lip in an ugly snarl, his white teeth glistening, and tried to
bite. But the Indian's moccasined foot shot up under the stallion's ear
and pressed him back. Then the roan hugged Silvermane so close that half
the time the Navajo virtually rode two horses. But for the rigidity of
his arms, and the play and sudden tension of his leg-muscles, the
Indian's work would have appeared commonplace, so dexterous was he, so
perfectly at home in his dangerous seat. Suddenly he whooped and August
Naab hauled back the gate, and the two horses, neck and neck, thundered
out upon the level stretch.
"Good!" cried August. "Let him rip now, Navvy. All over but the work,
Jack. I feared Silvermane would spear himself on some of those dead
cedar spikes in the corral. He's safe now."
Jack watched the horses plunge at breakneck speed down the stretch,
circle at the forest edge, and come tearing back. Silvermane was pulling
the roan faster than he had ever gone in his life, but the dark Indian
kept his graceful seat. The speed slackened on the second turn, and
decreased as, mile after mile, the imperturbable Indian held roan and
gray side to side and let them run.
never flagged. He began to understand the Indian, and to feel what the
restraint and drag must be to the horse. Never for a moment could
Silvermane elude the huge roan, the tight halter, the relentless Navajo.
Gallop fell to trot, and trot to jog, and jog to walk; and hour by hour,
without whip or spur or word, the breaker of desert mustangs drove the
wild stallion. If there were cruelty it was in his implacable slow
patience, his farsighted purpose. Silvermane would have killed himself
in an hour; he would have cut himself to pieces in one headlong dash,
but that steel arm suffered him only to wear himself out. Late that
afternoon the Navajo led a dripping, drooping, foam-lashed stallion into
the corral, tied him with the halter, and left him.
Later Silvermane drank of the water poured into the corral trough, and
had not the strength or spirit to resent the Navajo's caressing hand on
his