He went out the back door of the hotel so that few people might mark
his leaving, and cut for the woods. Once in them, he changed his
direction to the east, heading for the lower, rolling hills in that
direction. He turned back when the lights of the town had drawn into
one small, glimmering ray. Then this, too, went out, and with it the
pain of leaving Pete Reeve became acute. He felt lost and alone, that
keen mind had guided him so long. As he stalked along with the great
swinging strides through the darkness, the holster rubbed on his thigh
and he remembered Pete. Truly he had come into the hands of Pete Reeve
a child, and he was leaving him as a man.
The dawn found him forty miles away and still swinging strongly down
the winding road. It was better country now. The desert sand had
disappeared, and here the soil supported a good growth of grass that
would fatten the cattle. It was a cheerful country in more ways than
the greenness of the grass, however. There were no high mountains, but
a continual smooth rolling of hills, so that the landscape varied with
every half-mile he traveled. And every now and then he had to jump a
runlet of water that murmured across his trail.
A pleasant country, a clear sky, and a cool wind touching at his face.
The contentment of Bull Hunter increased with every step he took. He
had diminished the sharpness of his hunger by taking up a few links of
his belt, but he was glad when he saw smoke twisting over a hill and
came, on the other side, in view of a crossroads village. He fingered
the few pieces of silver in his pocket. That would be enough for
breakfast, at least.
It was enough; barely that and no more, for the long walk had made him
ravenous, and the keenness of his spirits served to put a razor edge
on an appetite which was already sharp. He began eating before the
regular breakfast at the little hotel was ready. He ate while the
other men were present. He was still eating when they left.
"How much?" he said when he was done.
His host scratched his head.
"I figure three times a regular meal ought to be about it," he said.
"Even then it don't cover everything; but matter of fact, I'm ashamed
to charge any more."
His ruefulness changed to a grin when he had the money in his hand,
and Bull Hunter rose from the table.
"But you got something to feed, son," he said. "You certainly got
something to feed. And--is what the boys are saying right?"
It came to Bull that while he sat at the table there had been many
curious glances directed toward him, and a humming whisper had passed
around the table more than once. But he was accustomed to these side
glances and murmurs, and he had paid no attention. Besides, food had
been before him.
"I don't know. What do they say?"
"That you're Dunbar from the South--Hal Dunbar."
"That's not my name," said Bull. "My name is Hunter."
"I guess they were wrong," said the other. "Trouble is, every time
anybody sees a big man they say, 'There goes Hal Dunbar.' But you're
too big even to be Dunbar I reckon."
He surveyed the bulk of Bull Hunter with admiring respect. This
personal survey embarrassed the big man. He would have withdrawn, but
his host followed with his conversation.
"We know Dunbar is coming up this way, though. He sent the word on up
that he's going to come to ride Diablo. I guess you've heard
about Diablo?"
Bull averred that he had not, and his eyes went restlessly down the
road. It wove in long curves, delightfully white with the bordering of
green on either side. He could see it almost tossing among the far-off
hills. Now was the time of all times for walking, and if Pete Reeve
started to trail him this morning, he would need to put as much
distance behind him by night as his long legs could cover. But still
the hotel proprietor hung beside him. He wanted to make the big man
talk. It was possible that there might be in him a story as big as
his body.
"So you ain't heard of Diablo? Devil is the right name for him. Black
as night and meaner'n a mountain lion. That's Diablo. He's big enough
and strong enough to carry even you. Account of him being so strong,
that's why Dunbar wants him."
"Big enough and strong enough to carry me?" repeated Bull Hunter.
He had had unfortunate experiences trying to ride horses. His weight
crushed down their quarters and made them walk with braced legs. To be
sure, that was up in the high mountains where the horses were little
more than ponies.
"Yep. Big enough. He's kind of a freak hoss, you see. Runs to almost
seventeen hands, I've heard tell, though I ain't seen him. He's over
to the Bridewell place yonder in the hills--along about fifteen miles
by the road, I figure. He run till he was three without ever being
taken up, and he got wild as a mustang. They never was good on
managing on the Bridewell place, you see? And then when they tried to
break him he started doing some breaking on his own account. They say
he can jump about halfway to the sky and come down stiff-legged in a
way that snaps your neck near off. I seen young Huniker along about a
month after he tried to ride Diablo. Huniker was a pretty good rider,
by all accounts, but he was sure a sick gent around hosses after
Diablo got through with him. Scared of a ten-year-old mare, Huniker
was, after Diablo finished with him. Scott Porter tried him, too. That
was a fight! Lasted close onto an hour, they say, nip and tuck all the
way. Diablo wasn't bucking all the time. No, he ain't that way. He
waits in between spells till he's thought up something new to do. And
he's always thinking, they say. But if he wasn't so mean he'd be a
wonderful hoss. Got a stride as long as from here to that shed,
they say."
He rambled on with a growing enthusiasm.
"And think of a hoss like that being given away!"
"Given away?" said Bull with a sudden interest.
And then he remembered that horses were outside of his education
entirely.
He listened with gloomy attention while his host went on. "Yes, sir.
Given away is what I said and given away is what I mean. Old Chick
Bridewell has kept him long enough, he says. He's tired of paying
buckaroos for getting busted up trying to ride that hoss. Man-eater,
that's what he calls Diablo, and he wants to give the hoss away to the
first man that can ride him. Hal Dunbar heard about it and sent up
word that he was coming up to ride him."
"He must be a brave man," said Bull innocently. He had an immense
capacity for admiring others.
"Brave?" The proprietor paused as though this had not occurred to him
before. "Why, they ain't such a thing as fear in Hal Dunbar, I guess.
But if he decides to ride Diablo, he'll ride him, well enough. He has
his way about things, Hal Dunbar does."
The sketchy portrait impressed Bull Hunter greatly. "You know him,
then?"
"How'd I be mistaking you for him if I knowed him? No, he lives way
down south, but they's a pile heard about him that's never seen him."
For some reason the words of his host remained in the mind of Bull as
he went down the road that day. Oddly enough, he pictured man and
horse as being somewhat alike--Diablo vast and black and fierce, and
Hal Dunbar dark and huge and terrible of eye, also; which was proof
enough that Bull Hunter was a good deal of a child. He cared less
about the world as it was than for the world as it might be, and as
long as life gave him something to dream about, he did not care in the
least about the facts of existence.
Another man would have been worried about the future; but Bull Hunter
went down the road with his swinging stride, perfectly at peace with
himself and with life. He had not enough money in his pocket to buy a
meal, but he was not thinking so far ahead.
It was still well before noon when he came in sight of the Bridewell
place. It varied not a whit from the typical ranch of that region, a
low-built collection of sheds and arms sprawling around the ranch
house itself. About the building was a far-flung network of corrals.
Bull Hunter found his way among them and followed a sound of
hammering. He was well among the sheds when a great black stallion
shot into view around a nearby corner, tossing his head and mane. He
was pursued by a shrill voice crying, "Diablo! Hey! You old fool!
Stand still ... it's me ... it's Tod!"
To the amazement of Bull Hunter, Diablo the Terrible, Diablo the
man-killer, paused and reluctantly turned about, shaking his head as
though he did not wish to obey but was compelled by the force of
conscience. At once a bare-legged boy of ten came in sight, running
and shaking his fist angrily at the giant horse. Indeed, it was a
tremendous animal. Not the seventeen hands that the hotel proprietor
had described to Bull, but a full sixteen three, and so proudly
high-headed, so stout-muscled of body, so magnificently long and
tapering of leg, that a wiser horseman than the hotelkeeper might have
put Diablo down for more than seventeen hands.
Most tall horses are like tall men--they are freakish and malformed in
some of their members; but Diablo was as trim as a pony. He had the
high withers, the mightily sloped shoulders, and the short back of a
weight carrier. And although at first glance his underpinning seemed
too frail to bear the great mass of his weight or withstand the effort
of his driving power of shoulders and deep, broad thighs, yet a closer
reckoning made one aware of the comfortable dimensions of the cannon
bone with all that this feature portended. Diablo carried his bulk
with the grace which comes of compacted power well in hand.
Not that Bull Hunter analyzed the stallion in any such fashion. He
was, literally, ignorant of horseflesh. But in spite of his ignorance
the long neck, not overfleshed, suggested length of stride and the
mighty girth meant wind beyond exhaustion and told of the great heart
within. The points of an ordinary animal may be overlooked, but a great
horse speaks for himself in every language and to every man. He was
coal-black, this Diablo, except for the white stocking of his off
forefoot; he was night-black, and so silken sleek that, as he turned
and pranced, flashes of light glimmered from shoulders to flanks.
Bull Hunter stared in amazement that changed to appreciation, and
appreciation that burst in one overpowering instant to the full
understanding of the beauty of the horse. Joy entered the heart of the
big man. He had looked on horses hitherto as pretty pictures perhaps,
but useless to him. Here was an animal that could bear him like the
wind wherever he would go. Here was a horse who could gallop
tirelessly under him all day and labor through the mountains, bearing
him as lightly as the cattle ponies bore ordinary men. The cumbersome
feeling of his own bulk, which usually weighed heavily on Bull,
disappeared. He felt light of heart and light of limb.
In the meantime the bare-legged boy had come to the side of the big
horse, still shrilling his anger. He stood under the lofty head of the
stallion and shook his small fist into the face of Diablo the
Terrible. And while Bull, quaking, expected to see the head torn from
the shoulders of the child, Diablo pointed his ears and sniffed the
fist of the boy inquisitively.
In fact, this could not be the horse of which the hotelkeeper had told
him, or perhaps he had been recently tamed and broken?
That, for some reason, made the heart of Bull Hunter sink.
The boy now reached up and twisted his fingers into the mane of the
black.
"Come along now. And if you pull away ag'in, you old fool, Diablo,
I'll give you a thumping, I tell you. Git along!"
Diablo meekly lowered his head and made his step mincing to regulate
his gait to that of his tiny master. He was brought alongside a rail
fence. There he waited patiently while the boy climbed up to the top
rail and then slid onto his back. Again Bull Hunter caught his breath.
He expected to see the stallion leap into the air and snap the child
high above his head with a single arching of his back, but there was
no such violent reaction. Diablo, indeed, turned his head with his
ears flattened and bared his teeth, but it was only to snort at the
knee of the boy. Plainly he was bluffing, if horses ever bluffed. The
boy carelessly dug his brown toes into the cheek of the great horse
and shoved his head about.
"Giddap," he called. "Git along, Diablo!"
Diablo walked gently forward.
"Hurry up! I ain't got all day!" And the boy thumped the giant with
his bare heels.
Diablo broke into a trot as soft, as smooth flowing, as water passing
over a smooth bed of sand. Bull ran to the corner of the shed and
gaped after them until the pair slid around a corner and were gone.
Instinctively he drew off his hat and gaped.
He was startled back to himself by loud laughter nearby, and, looking
up, he saw an old fellow in overalls with a handful of nails and a
hammer. He stood among a scattering of uprights which represented,
apparently, the beginnings of the skeleton of a barn. Now he leaned
against one of these uprights and indulged his mirth. Bull regarded
him mildly; he was used to being laughed at.