Alcatraz stood off and eyed them in disgust. When he was a yearling, he felt, he had known more than those big, stupid, beautiful creatures. But plainly they wanted to get out with him. A wild horse is to the tame what the adventurous traveller is to the quiet man who builds a home, and from the grey mare and Alcatraz the six were learning many things.
The scent of the open desert was on them, the sweat of hard running had dried on their hides, their heads were recklessly proud; and this tall stallion jumped the fence as though there had never been men who made laws which well-trained horses must not transgress. Plainly he wanted them to come out. They were very willing to go for a romp but they knew nothing about jumping, as yet, and all they could do was to show their eagerness to be out for a run by milling up and down the fence.
If that were the case, there were other ways of opening corrals and Alcatraz knew them all. He tried the fence with his shoulder, leaning all his weight. More than once he had smashed time-rotted fences in this manner, but he found that these posts were new and well tamped and the boards were strongly nailed. He gave up that effort and went about looking for a gate. Gates were not hard to find. A gate is that part of a fence under which many tracks and many scents go; it is also a section which swings a little and rattles annoyingly in a wind. Upon the top board of that section there is sure to be thick scent of man where his hands have fallen. Alcatraz found the gate. Under the weight of his shoulder it creaked but did not give. He took the top rail in his teeth, while the mares stood back, wondering, in a high-headed semi-circle and the grey kept nudging at his flank, saying very plainly: "Enough of this nonsense. These gangling creatures, all legs and foolishness, are not of our kind, O my master. Let us be gone!" But Alcatraz heeded her not.
He shook the gate back and forth.
There are three kinds of fastenings for corral gates. One of them squeaks and strains when it is pulled against. It is made of wire that leaves a bitter taste of iron and rust in the mouth when it is touched.
Wire is often very difficult but with teeth and prehensile upper lip it may usually be worked up high, and finally it will fall over the top of one of the posts with a rattle, and then the gate is open. Another kind of fastening rattles very much when the gate is shaken. This means that a loose board unites gates and post, running in a slot, and the only way to handle such a gate is to take the loose board by the end and draw it back as far as possible. Then the gate always swings open of its own accord. There is a third kind of fastening. Manuel Cordova used it. It consists of a padlock and chain and where this is found one had better leave the cursed thing untried for it will never be broken or removed.
By the first shake of the gate and the corresponding rattle Alcatraz knew that the sliding board fastened it. He sniffed for it and found it very easily, for always the latch-board is the one heaviest with the man-scent. He found it and worked it easily back. It caught on a nail.
He tugged again, and as he tugged he quivered at the sound of a human voice and shrank as though the familiar whip of Cordova had cut him.
"They"re a little restless to-night, but aren"t they dears, Shorty?"
queried Marianne.
"Kind of dear," said the cowpuncher, "but maybe they"re worth the price." For all his surliness, however, Shorty was her best ally.
"Wait till you see Lady Mary begin to--but isn"t that a horse beyond the corral? A grey horse? I think it is, but it can"t be."
"Why not?"
"There isn"t a grey horse on the ranch, and--oh!"
For the gate of the corral creaked and then swung wide. They could not see Alcatraz, for the bay mares stood between.
"Don"t move, don"t speak!" whispered the girl. "It"s that stupid Lucas man. I told Lew Hervey that he was too careless to take care of the mares; and the first thing he"s done is to leave the gate unlatched.
I"ll steal around and--"
At the first sound of the voice the grey mare had drifted deeper into the safety of the night; Alcatraz with a careful effort pulled open the gate; and the wind, aiding him, blew it wide, and now the soft whinny of invitation to the mares cut into the words of Marianne. She went around the corral bending low, skulking in her run; for once the mares got out the gate they might bolt like crazy things and come to harm in the murderous barbed-wire fences. Shorty was hurrying around on the other side.
Before she had taken half a dozen steps the neigh of the stallion, deafeningly loud, brought her to a halt with her hands clasped. She saw the mares start under the alarm-call and rush for the gate; in a moment their hoofs were volleying down the road and the wail of Marianne went shrilling: "Lew Hervey! Lew Hervey! They"re gone!"
Lew Hervey, in the bunkhouse, pushed away his cards and rose with a curse. "That"s what comes of working for a woman," he growled. "No peace. No rest. Work day and night. And if you ain"t kept working you"re just kept worried. It"s h.e.l.l!"
He clumped to the door and cast it open.
"Well?" he called into the darkness.
"Every one out!" cried Marianne. "The mares have broken through the gate and stampeded!"
CHAPTER X
THE THIEF
They came with a rush, at that. The mares the girl prized so highly were, in the phrase of the cowpunchers, "high-headed fools" incapable of taking care of themselves. Running wild through the night, as likely as not they would cut themselves to pieces on the first barbed wired fence that blocked their way. With such a thought to urge them, Marianne"s hired men caught their fastest mounts and saddled like lightning. There was a play of ropes and curses in the big corral, the scuffle of leather as saddle after saddle flopped into place, and then a stream of dim riders darted through the corral gate.
All of this, dazed by the misfortune, Marianne waited to see, but as the first of the pursuers darted out of sight she turned and ran to the box stall where she kept her favorite pony, a nimble bay, inimitable on a mountain trail and with plenty of foot on the flat. But never did hurry waste so much precious time. The rush of her entrance in the dark startled the nervous horse, and she had to soothe it for a minute or more with a voice broken by excitement. After that, there was the saddling to be done and her fingers stumbled and stuttered over the straps so that when at last she led the bay out and swung up to the saddle there was no sound or sight of the cowpunchers. But a young moon was edging above the eastern mountains and by that light, now only an illusory haze, she hoped to gain sight of her men.
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 "d.a.m.ned 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 gla.s.ses and swept a segment of the compa.s.s. 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 gla.s.s 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 hors.e.m.e.n pa.s.sed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them, after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. G.o.d 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 b.u.m 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.