The Island Stallion

by Walter Farley

“I could try to kill the Piebald.” There was no doubt of the sincerity in Steve’s voice.

  “You’re kidding,” Pitch said quickly.

  “No, I’m not, Pitch.”

  It was too dark to see Steve’s eyes. Pitch said, “You’re being silly, Steve. Come on, let’s get the fire going and have some food.”

  But the boy didn’t move, and his head was still turned toward the band—toward the Piebald. “If only we’d brought a gun,” he said almost to himself. “I could have killed him with a gun. Still, there must be some other way.”

  “Steve!” Pitch’s voice was shrill. “What in the world is the matter with you! You try killing that vicious horse and you’ll be killed yourself! I won’t have any more of this foolish talk. These horses were here long before we were born, and they’ll be here long after we’re dead. Why get so excited over the Piebald? He means nothing to you.”

  “But he does! Can’t you understand, Pitch?” Steve asked, turning quickly to his friend. “Can’t you see that if the Piebald is left as their leader this breed will never be the same? His blood will be in every single foal, Pitch. They’ll be like him and much worse in a very few years.”

  After a long silence Pitch said quietly, “So that’s what’s troubling you. But you still can’t do anything about it, Steve. You couldn’t possibly do anything. If it’s the end of this particular breed of horse, it’s the end—that’s all.”

  “But not if I can kill the Piebald,” Steve insisted.

  “You’re not making sense, Steve,” Pitch returned angrily. “And I’m not going to allow you to risk your neck trying to kill him either. The only one who could possibly do away with the Piebald is that red horse, and I’m afraid he won’t be back for another try.”

  “But maybe he will, Pitch!” Steve said excitedly. “Maybe that’s it! Maybe he will come back!”

  “Maybe he will,” Pitch agreed resignedly, walking back to the cave.

  Steve was behind him, his voice eager now. “Maybe that’s why he ran away—so he can come back again, I mean! He’s an intelligent animal, Pitch. Don’t forget that.”

  “I’m not forgetting it,” Pitch returned agreeably.

  Steve didn’t speak again until after they had opened their packs, and then his voice had lost its eagerness. “Or do you think, Pitch,” he asked slowly, “that he took too much punishment today, that he’ll never be the same? I’ve heard of such things happening to prize fighters.”

  “This is a horse, Steve,” Pitch replied, “not a prize fighter. And, frankly, I don’t know anything about either of them.”

  A few minutes later the fire was licking greedily beneath their stove.

  “Pitch …”

  Pitch turned to the boy, noting the tense face, the bright, excited eyes. “What is it now, Steve?” he asked.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to look for Flame. Maybe I can help him some way. Maybe I can do something that’ll get him back to fight the Piebald—when he’s well again, I mean.”

  “Sure, Steve. Maybe it’s a good idea.” Pitch felt certain that Steve wouldn’t even get a glimpse of the red stallion, much less be able to do anything to send him back to fight the Piebald. But searching for Flame would take his mind off the black-and-white stallion and his ridiculous notion of finding some way to kill him. Pitch found the thought comforting. “Open a can of beans, Steve,” he said. “The pot is ready.”

  Steve set out alone early the next morning. Reaching the valley floor, he began crossing it to get to the far side. The horses had moved down the valley, but still could be easily seen.

  As Steve walked along, his gaze remained on the Piebald. The breeze was coming from upwind, carrying the boy’s scent to the stallion. But Steve didn’t think that he was in any danger. The stallion would fight anything that threatened his supremacy of the band, but he wouldn’t go out looking for trouble. Steve realized, too, that his scent was something entirely new to the Piebald. It would bother him and he would be curious, but only if Steve approached the band would he be in any danger. And Steve planned to keep far away from the horses. He had nothing with which to protect himself. One of the coils of rope was all he carried, and that, he had told Pitch, was for Flame just in case he got close to him. Steve knew Pitch was watching him. He had promised him he’d go to the far side of the valley, away from the horses, before making his way down.

  The Piebald stood at gaze, his long ears pricked forward, his large face, half black, half white, still turned in Steve’s direction. For several minutes he stood there, his small eyes unwavering. Then he lowered his heavy head to the grass.

  Steve’s pace quickened until he was running. Reaching the tall grass, he found it to be young wild sugar cane like that on Antago. Flimsy as it was, he welcomed it as a protection. It grew high, almost to his chest. He crouched low beneath it and only the bending of the stalks betrayed his presence.

  Cautiously he made his way to the end of the cane, then he stopped to take in his surroundings. There were some trees between him and the yellow walls. More of them grew along the edge of the cane and down the side of the valley. They would afford him some protection if he needed it. Now he slowly raised his head in the direction of the Piebald and his band, noting with relief that the Piebald was still grazing and had moved closer to the band. So far, so good. It would appear that the black-and-white stallion had decided to ignore him, since Steve did not seem to be a threat to him or his newly acquired band.

  Bending down again, Steve started down the valley, taking short, fast steps. But it wasn’t until he had passed opposite the place where the Piebald and his band were grazing that he breathed easily and ceased raising his head every so often above the cane to look at them.

  Now Steve was downwind from the Piebald and he felt comparatively safe. His pace quickened. His destination was approximately two miles still farther down the valley. When he arrived there he would look across the valley floor for the lone tree with the red cluster of flowers that grew alongside the green-carpeted valley floor. It was a little past that tree that he had seen Flame turn into the tall cane, running in the direction of the yellow walls until he became lost in the shadows.

  More than half an hour had passed when Steve raised his head to find that he was just about opposite the tree across the valley that he was using as his marker. He continued walking another hundred yards or more, then entered the tall cane again, making his way to the green-carpeted floor. Reaching the edge of the cane, he peered through the stalks and saw that the band was still far up the valley. The distance between the horses and Steve was too great for them to notice him as he walked quickly onto the green grass. Halfway across, he broke into a run and didn’t stop until he had reached the cane on the other side of the valley.

  Now he was below the tree and near the spot where he had seen Flame entering the tall cane. His eyes followed the line of stalks from where he stood to the tree. There was no break in the line, no evidence of broken or bent stalks to disclose Flame’s path. Steve then turned in the opposite direction, his gaze still following the edge of the cane. There was nothing there either to show that the horse had gone through. Knowing that Flame had passed the tree, Steve began walking farther down the valley. He had gone about three hundred yards when he came upon the broken stalks. Quickly he followed the path swept clear by the running horse.

  THE CHASE

  10

  The field of wild cane was no wider than a hundred yards at most, and when Steve emerged from it he found that there was a long, gradual slope to the yellow, precipitous walls. He looked around for some trace of Flame’s trail, but his untrained eyes found no evidence of flying hoofs over the grassy plain.

  For some time he stood there undecided, sweeping his eyes over the yellow walls, then along their base. Finally he set out, traveling down the valley toward a thin cloud of vapor beginning to rise from the ground about a mile away. Surely, he decided, there was no other direction in which Flame could have gone. The base of the walls w
as an unbroken line of sheer, bare rock which towered hundreds of feet into the sky. Like himself, the red stallion could have had no alternative but to go down the valley.

  The ground before him began to fall gradually toward the hollow from which the mist rose. Steve stopped to rest for a moment and looked behind him at the valley, at the bending cane and beyond that to the valley floor, rich in grass and colorful foliage. Then he turned back to the desolate land ahead of him, throwing the rope he carried over his shoulder. He was near enough to the vapors to smell their foul stench. They came from a patch of marshland, as he had thought. And, as the sun began to rise above the walls to the east, the vapors thickened as though in resentment against Steve’s approach.

  But the sickening smells of rotting vegetation did not stop him; instead Steve’s pace quickened as he approached the marsh. He felt certain that Flame had come this way, and with the ground already becoming soft and wet beneath his feet, there was the possibility of finding the stallion’s hoofprints. Upon reaching the border of the dismal swamp, Steve came to a stop. To the left the vapors reached almost to the walls, and to his right they extended almost to the cane. How deep the marsh went he could not tell.

  Steve kept his eyes on the ground as he walked along the edge of the marsh. He was but fifty yards from the walls when he came to an abrupt halt. Quickly he dropped to his knees, running his hands over the soft earth. He had found Flame’s hoofprints and they led straight into the marsh!

  He hesitated a moment and thought of waiting for the vapors to subside. They were probably at their worst in the sun’s first rays. Perhaps when Flame had entered the marsh last night there had been none at all. But why even think about that! He was on the track of the red stallion and perhaps too close to him already to delay his search any longer than was absolutely necessary. Holding his breath, Steve plunged into the gray, cloudlike world.

  Within the marsh, he saw a slimy wilderness of high reeds and swamp ferns dotted with many small black pools and broken only by long, green, narrow avenues of what was comparatively solid ground. It was down these strips of green that Flame’s trail led. Steve followed them cautiously. The vapors weren’t as dense as he had expected, but the stench, when he finally had to breathe, was almost more than he could stand. Yet he kept on, encouraged by the evidence before him that the red stallion had gone on ahead and that the vapors were thinning in the direction he was traveling.

  Flame’s trail zigzagged with the green strips, but Steve knew from the gradual rise of the land that he was going toward the walls. He never relaxed his vigil as he walked along slowly, treading carefully over the ground. Quagmires, heavy with sucking, all-engulfing quicksand, were on each side of him. That Flame had passed over this same route did not make Steve less cautious. And as he went farther along, he was certain that Flame knew his way very well. There had been no hesitancy or break in the stallion’s stride, for his hoofprints were regular and long enough for a slow gallop.

  In a little while the vapors dwindled to mere wisps and the ground grew more and more solid beneath Steve’s feet. The pull upward became more abrupt and as the air cleared, feeling almost fresh again, Steve breathed deeply and walked faster.

  At last he was completely free of the marsh, and he stopped abruptly, astounded by what he saw ahead of him. On either side were the high yellow cliffs and before him a long, steep channel penetrating deeply within the walls! Flame’s hoofprints were no longer visible on the hard ground, but Steve had no doubt that the stallion had gone on ahead.

  His heart pounding heavily, more from excitement than from the exertion of his climb, Steve followed the channel which, he decided, at one time had been the bed of a stream emptying into the marsh below. The dry stream bed was strewn with rocks and Steve picked his way slowly among them. The course, although still steep, began to twist and turn, the yellow walls closing in more and more.

  For another quarter of an hour Steve walked up the gorge. He picked his way with great care, for the stream bed was pitted with deep holes. Steve wondered how Flame had managed to go up this passage without breaking a leg. The red stallion had passed through here many times before; there was no doubt of that. Finally Steve came to the end of the gorge and before his eyes stretched a green sliver of a valley, not more than half a mile long and only three hundred yards or so wide. Through the center of it ran the dry stream bed, with short, green grass on either side that became lost in the wild cane that spread to the walls.

  Steve stood silently in awe at his discovery of the new valley. It gleamed like a green gem placed in a setting of yellow gold. The high cliffs surrounding it enhanced its solemn beauty and breathtaking solitude.

  So overwhelmed was Steve by his discovery that it was a matter of minutes before he saw the red stallion. Flame was grazing less than half the valley away from Steve, and the boy’s body became rigid as he looked upon him with unbelieving eyes. The stallion walked over to a stream and stretched his long, graceful neck down to it, his red coat blazing in the sun.

  When Steve finally moved it was in the direction of the cane. He walked quickly, yet his eyes never left the red stallion, who still hadn’t become aware of his presence. Steve wanted to get close to him. It never occurred to him that he might be in danger from the red stallion, for this was his horse and there was no fear within him. He had known this moment before, for very often in his dreams he had approached Flame as he was doing now.

  Steve had reached the tall cane and was in a crouched position when the stallion raised his head and turned it in the boy’s direction.

  Not a muscle of the red stallion’s body moved, but he sensed danger. His coat and long mane were matted with his opponents’ blood as well as his own; his mouth was raw and red from the fury of his battles. Yet he raised his head arrogantly and fire still burned in his startled eyes. He was alert and suspicious of an enemy he could not see. The scent that came to his sensitive nostrils was of an animal unknown to him. His small head moved slowly over the grass, his neck so tense that the great muscles bulged beneath his velvet-soft coat. He was accustomed to facing danger. Yet now, after a few minutes of patient watchfulness, he turned away, frightened. Quickly he moved farther up the valley. The fear that was slowly taking over his tired body was as new and strange to him as the scent that now came to his nostrils.

  Steve had remained absolutely still, close enough to watch the stallion as he wheeled on rigid hind legs and made off for the far end of the valley.

  Now Steve stood up amid the cane, realizing that the stallion knew of his presence in the valley. He can’t go far, Steve told himself. There’s no place to go up there.

  And there’s no sense in my hiding from him, he thought. The only way I can do anything for him is to win his confidence. He’s more beautiful than anything I’ve ever dreamed of! If there ever was a perfect horse, he’s it. And he’s not hurt badly. I can tell from the free, easy strides he’s taking. He’s been cut up plenty. But he’ll be well in a few days, for wounds heal fast in a wild, healthy animal like him. He’s tired more than anything else now. I know he can beat the Piebald. He could whip anything! He was smart enough to get away, to wait until he’s ready to meet the Piebald again, and on an equal basis. He’ll go back to his band. He’s been their leader too long to keep away from them, to live alone—an outcast.

  At the end of the valley, the red stallion came to a stop, then wheeled around. His small ears were pricked forward, alert for the slightest sound; his muscles were tense and ready, as were his wits. But he needed only his eyes to see his foe. His shifting gaze easily picked up the two-legged figure walking through the tall grass, coming steadily in his direction. His gigantic body trembled and he opened his blood-caked mouth to bare his teeth. He moved about restlessly, but neither drew away nor advanced to meet this new foe. His thin-skinned nostrils quivered, then curled. Finally he shattered the stillness of the valley with his whistle. Shrill, loud and clear, it reverberated from wall to wall!

  Then that
new feeling was there again. It probed the ravaged body of the red stallion until it found and engulfed his heart. Shaking his fiery head, he pawed the ground. That new feeling had come during his fight with the black-and-white stallion and now was part of him. His splendid body trembled, as always before an encounter with a foe. But he knew it was different this time. His trembling was not caused by tension, excitement or ruthlessness, but by a fear that now dominated every inch of him. Accepting it, he turned again, running with long, ground-covering bounds away from the figure that was tracking him.

  Steve had crossed the short grass and was walking alongside the dry stream bed when he saw Flame turn and head up the grassy slope toward the base of the walls. He didn’t know whether to be surprised that the stallion had run away from him. He had never tracked a wild horse before. Yet momentarily he remembered the savageness of the Piebald, born wild as Flame had been. The Piebald hadn’t run away, but then he had had a band to protect; and that, Steve decided, must be the difference in their reactions to the sight of him.

  If I can just get close enough to show him I don’t mean any harm, Steve thought. If I can just do that.

  The walls toward which Flame ran were the highest in the valley, rising almost a thousand feet, with their summits touching the sky. At their base the rock was neither sheer nor precipitous, Steve found, but pierced with narrow crags and chasms. And into one of those indentations in the walls Steve saw Flame suddenly disappear!

  Walking faster, Steve went up the slope until creeping shadows from the walls above swallowed the brightness of the late morning sun. Ahead of him was the dark tunnel from which the stream came, and a little to the left of it, the narrow chasm where Flame had gone.

  The chasm led ever downward. Steve hadn’t gone very far when he realized that no river had cut this passage; possibly a giant disturbance of nature, such as an earthquake, had made the cleavage through the walls. The course was straight, with no twisting or turning as in the gorge. The walls overhead were jagged and torn, so much so that at times they shut out the blue sky from Steve’s wondering gaze.