Bull Hunter, Max Brand [top novels to read .TXT] 📗

to leave him. He began to tremble violently. Bull felt the sudden thundering of the great heart beneath the pressure of his knee.

To the stallion, this man had been a friend, a constant companion. The touch of his hand was pleasant. Pleasanter still was the continual deep murmur of the voice, reassuring, telling him of a superior and guardian mind looking out for his interests. Now that hand was stroking his sleek neck and that voice was steadily in his ear. But the position was the most hated one. To be sure, there was no saddle, no cutting, binding cinch, no drag of cruel Spanish curb to control his head, no tearing spurs to threaten him. But his flanks twitched where the spurs had dug in many a time, and he panted, remembering the cinches. Those memories built up a panic. He became unsure. The voice reached him less distinctly. Moreover it was a strange time of the evening. The light of the day was nearly done; the moon was barely up, and all things were ghostly and unreal in that slant light.

Something of all that went through the mind of Diablo was understood by Bull Hunter. It was telegraphed to him by the twitching and vibration of great muscles, by the stiff arching of the neck, and the snorting breathing. But he was beginning to forget fear. The stallion danced lightly forward, and as the wind struck the face of Bull Hunter he suddenly rejoiced. This was what he had dreamed of, to be carried thus lightly, easily. The weight that had crushed other horses was nothing to Diablo. It made him feel buoyant. He became tinglingly alert. On the back of Diablo not a horse of the mountains could overtake him if he fled; and not a man of the mountains could escape him if he pursued on the back of the stallion.

That thought had hardly formed in his excited mind when Diablo sprang, cat-footed, to one side. It made Bull Hunter sway, and he naturally sought to preserve his balance by gripping the powerful barrel of the horse with his knees. But at the first touch of the knee Diablo went suddenly mad. Exactly what he did Bull Hunter never knew. Indeed, it seemed that Diablo left his feet, shot a dizzy height into the air, and at the crest of his rise did three or four things at once. At any rate, as the stallion landed, Bull pitched from the arched back and hurtled forward and to the right side. He landed heavily against the ground, his head striking a small rock; and he lay there a moment, stunned.

Far off he heard Tod shrilling at him, "Bull! Are you hurt?"

He gathered himself together and arose, "I'm all right. Stay where you are!"

"Don't try him again. He'll kill you, Bull!"

"Maybe. But I'm going to try."

Diablo stood on the far side of the corral in the moonlight, a splendid figure with haughty tail and head. Inwardly he was trembling, enraged. He knew what would come. He had thrown men before, and usually he had tried to batter them to pieces after they fell. This man he had no desire to batter. There had been no saddle, no bridle, no spurs, no quirt—nevertheless, he must not be controlled by the hand of any man! But having thrown the fellow, now other men would run on him, swinging the accursed ropes over their heads, shouting, cursing at him in strident voices. Vitally he yearned to break through the bars of the corral and flee, but the bars were there and he must stay in the inclosure with this friendly enemy. It was not the prostrate man he feared so much as vengeance from other men, for that had always been the way.

But no one came. No shouts were heard except from the small, thin, familiar voice of Tod. And presently the giant arose from the ground where he had fallen and came toward him. Diablo flattened his ears expectantly. At the first throat-tearing curse he would charge. But no curse came. The man approached, as always, with extended hand, and the voice was the smooth, gentle murmur that carries peace into the shadowy mind of a horse.

Something relaxed in Diablo. If the man did not resent being thrown off—if that were a sort of game, as it were—why should he, Diablo, resent having the man on his back? The hand touched his nose gently; another hand was stroking his neck.

Presently he was led to the fence and again that heavy weight slid onto his back. He crouched again, with waves of blind panic surging up in him, but the panic did not master his sense this time, and as his brain cleared he began to discover that there was no urging, no will of another imposed upon him. He could walk where he pleased, following his own sweet will, or else he could stand still. It made no difference; but the soft-touching hand and the deep, quiet voice were assuring him that the man was glad to be up there on his back.

Diablo turned his head. One ear quivered and came forward tentatively; then the other. He had accepted Bull Hunter.

Afterward Bull found Tod. The boy wrung his hand ecstatically.

"That's what I call game!" he said.

"Why, Tod," the big man smiled, "you did the same thing."

"He knew I was nothing. But you're a growed man. But—what's this,
Bull? Your back's all wet."

"It's nothing much," said Bull calmly. "When I fell, my head hit a stone. There's some things worth paying for, and Diablo's one of them."

CHAPTER 17

The cut proved, as he had said, to be a small thing; but it turned out that Diablo was far from won. He was haltered and he would carry Bull bareback. The saddle was quite another affair. So Bull returned to the idea of the barley sack, with gradual additions. On each side of the sack he attached hanging straps. Diablo snorted at these and tried them with his teeth. They reminded him vaguely of the swinging stirrups that had so often battered his tender sides. He discovered that the straps were not alive, however, and were not harmful. And when their length was increased and an uncovered stirrup was tied on each side, he gradually became accustomed to these also. The next stage was passing the straps under his belly. They were tied there loosely, the circle was completed, and Diablo, examining them critically, found nothing wrong. Then, a dozen times in a single evening, the straps were drawn up, tighter and tighter, until they touched him. At this he became excited, and it required all the resourcefulness of Bull to quiet him. But in three days the barley sack and its queer-looking additions had been changed for a true saddle—with the cinches drawn up tight enough for riding. And this without eliciting a single bucking spasm from Diablo!

Not even to Tod did Bull Hunter impart his great tidings. He had not yet climbed into that real saddle; Diablo had not yet heard the creak of the stirrup leathers under the weight of his rider. Indeed, there was still much to be done before the happy day when he saddled the black stallion and took down the bars of the corral gate and rode him out. And rode him without a bit! For on the point of steel in the mouth of Diablo, Bull Hunter knew that the horse would be against it resolutely. So he confined himself to a light hackamore alone. That was enough, for Diablo had learned to rein over the neck and stop at the slightest pull of the reins.

The next morning he went out to his work with a light heart. They had had the help of several new men during the past ten days and now the frame of the roof was almost completed. It would not be long before Bull's services could be dispensed with and he connected the idea of the completion of the barn in a symbolic fashion with the completion of his conquest of the stallion. The two would be accomplished in the same moment, as it were. No wonder, then, that as he climbed the ladder up the side of the barn, with the ladder quaking beneath his weight, Bull Hunter began to sing, his thundering bass ringing among the ranch buildings until Mrs. Bridewell opened the kitchen window to hear the better, and old Bridewell stopped his ears in mock dismay at the thunder of Bull's voice.

But the work was not two hours old when little Tod scampered up to his side.

"Bull," he whispered, "Hal Dunbar is down yonder with a couple of men.
He's come to ride Diablo. What'll we do, Bull? What'll we do?"

"Diablo will throw him," said Bull with conviction.

"But he won't. He can't," stammered the boy in his excitement. "Nothing could throw Hal Dunbar. Wait till you see him! Just you wait till you see. Gee, Bull, he's as big as you and—"

The other qualifications were apparently too amazing to be adequately described by the vocabulary of Tod.

"If any other man can ride Diablo," said Bull at length, "I don't think I care about him so much. I've been figuring that I'm the only man who can get on his back. If somebody else can handle him, they're welcome to the horse as far as I'm concerned."

"Are you going to let him go like that?" Tod was bitter with shame and anger. "After all our work, are you going to give him up without a fight?"

"A fight would be a gunfight, and a gunfight ends up in a death," said
Bull gently. "I don't like bloodshed, Tod!"

The boy writhed. Here was an idol smashed with a vengeance!

"I might of knowed!" he groaned. "You ain't nothing but—but a big hulk!"

And he turned on his heel and gave the exciting news to his father.

For an event of this caliber, Bridewell called down all his men from the building, and they started for the corral. Hal Dunbar and his two men already were standing close to the bars, and Diablo stood quivering, high-headed, in the center of the inclosure. But, of the picture, the attention of Bull Hunter centered mainly on Hal Dunbar.

His dreams of the man had been true. He was a huge fellow, as tall as Bull, or taller, and nearly as bulky. But about Bull Hunter there was a suggestion of ponderous unwieldiness, and there was none of that suggestion about Hal Dunbar. He was lithe and straight as a poplar, and as supple in his movements. The poise of his head and the alertness of his body and something of lightness in his whole posture told of the trained athlete. Providence had given the man a marvelous body, and he had improved it to the uttermost. To crown all, there was a remarkably handsome face, dark eyes and coal-black hair.

Yet, more than the imposing body of this hero of the ranges, Bull was impressed by the spirit of the man. The thing that Tod had felt, he felt in turn. It shone from the eye, it spoke in the set of Dunbar's mouth, something unconquerable. It was impossible, after a single glance, to imagine this man failing. Diablo, it was true, had the same invincible air. Indeed, they seemed meant for each other, this horse and this man. They might have been picked from a crowd and the one assigned to the other. Huge, lithe, fleet, powerful, and fiercely free, surely Hal Dunbar was intended by fate to sit in the saddle and govern Diablo according to his will.

The heart of Charlie Hunter sank. Here was the end, then, of all the love he had put into his work, of all the feminine gentleness with which he had petted Diablo and soothed him. And he discovered, in that bitter moment, that he had not worked merely to gain control of the horse. There would be no joy in making Diablo bend to his will. His aim was, and from the first unconsciously had been, to win Diablo so that the stallion would serve him joyously and freely out of the love he bore him. As he thought of this, his glance rested on the long, spoon-handled spurs of big Hal Dunbar.

Dunbar was shaking hands with Bridewell, leaning a trifle over the little old man.

"Here's one that'll be sorry to see you ride Diablo," said Bridewell. He pointed to Hunter. "He's been working weeks, trying to make a pet out of the hoss."

"A pet out of him? A pet?" echoed Dunbar.

He measured