"Good. These people are the real wild-horse experts, Kirby. Not much the
Trinfans don’t know about horses." _Don_ Cazar was already on his way to
the door and Drew fell in behind Bartolomé.
The Trinfan outfit was small, considering the job they intended, Drew
thought. A cart pulled by two mules, lightly made and packed high, was the
nucleus of their small caravan. Burros—two of them—were roped behind and,
to Drew’s surprise, a cow, bawling fretfully and intended, he later
learned, to play foster mother to any unweaned foals which might be picked
up. The cart was driven by a Mexican in leather breeches and jacket over a
red shirt. Behind him rode the boy and girl Drew had seen in the Tubacca
alley, mounted on rangy, nervous horses that had speed in every line of
their under-fleshed bodies. Each rider trailed four spare mounts roped
nose to tail.
"_Buenos días, Don_ Cazar." For so small a man the Mexican on the cart
seat produced a trumpet-sized voice. He touched the roll-edged brim of his
sombrero, and Drew noted that his arm was crooked as if in the past it had
been broken and poorly set.
"_Buenos dias, Señor_ Trinfan. This house is yours." Rennie went to the
side of the cart. "The west corral is ready for your use as always. Draw
on the stores for any need you may have—"
"_Gracias, Don_ Cazar." It was the thanks of equal to equal. "You have
some late news of the wild ones?"
"Only that the pinto still runs near the well."
"That spotted one—_sí_, he is an Apache for cunning, for deviltry of
spirit. It may be that this time he will not be the lucky one. There is in
him a demon. Did I not see him, with my own eyes, kill a foal, tear flesh
from the flanks of its dam when she tried to drop out of the run? _Sí_—a
real _diablo_, that one!"
"Get rid of him one way or another, Trinfan. He is a danger to the Range.
He killed another stud this season. I am as sure of that as if I had seen
him in action."
"Ah, the blue one you thought might be a runner to match Oro. _Sí_, that
was a great pity, _Don_ Cazar. Well, we shall try, we shall try this time
to put that _diablo_ under!"
An hour later Drew was facing a _diablo_ of his own, with far less
confidence than Hilario Trinfan had voiced. Just how stupid could one be?
Around him now were men trained from early childhood to this life, and he
could show no skill at their employment. All the way out from Texas he had
practiced doggedly with the lariat, and his best fell far short of what a
range-bred child could do.
Yet he had an audience waiting down at the corral. Drew’s mouth was a
straight line. He would soon confirm their belief that _Don_ Cazar had in
truth hired Shiloh instead of his owner. But there was no use trying to
duck the ordeal, and the Kentuckian had never been one to put off the
inevitable with a pallid hope that something would turn up to save him.
Only this time, apparently, fortune was going to favor him.
"Which one you wish, _señor?_" Teodoro Trinfan, rope in hand, stood there
ready to cast for one of the milling colts. Why the boy was making that
offer of assistance Drew had no inkling. But to accept would give him a
slight chance to prove he could do part of the work.
He had already made his selection in the corral, though he had despaired
of ever getting that animal at rope’s end.
"The black—"
6
He worked in the dust of the smaller corral, with Croaker’s help, adapting
his knowledge of eastern gentling the way he had mentally planned it
during the days since he had accepted the job. With the excited and
frightened colt roped to the steady mule Drew tried to think horse, feel
horse, even be horse, shutting out all the rest of the world just as he
had on the day of the race. He must sense the colt’s terror of the rope,
his horror of the strange human smell—the man odor which was so
frightening that a blanket hung up at a water hole could keep wild horses
away from the liquid they craved.
Drew talked as he had to Shiloh, as if this black could understand every
word. He twitched the lead rope, and Croaker paced sedately about in a
wide circle, dragging the colt with him. Drew then reached across the bony
back of the mule, pressed his hand up and down the sweaty, shivering hide
of the black. No hurry, must not rush the steady, mild gesture to the
horse that here was a friend.
The Kentuckian had no idea of the passing of time; it was all part of the
knowledge that slow movements, not swift ones, would prevent new panic.
The blanket was shown, allowing the black to sniff down its surface,
before it was flapped back and forth across the colt’s back, and finally
left there. Now the saddle. And with that cinched into place, the black
stood quietly beside Croaker.
Drew mounted the mule and rode. The saddled black, loosened from the twin
tie, followed the mule twice around the corral. The rider dismounted from
Croaker, was up on the black. For perilous seconds he felt flesh and
muscles tense under his weight; then the body relaxed.
His hand went up. "Open the gate!" he called softly.
Seeming to realize he was free of the pole walls, the black exploded in a
burst of speed which was close to Shiloh’s racing spurt. Drew let him go.
Three-quarters of an hour later he rode back, the black blowing foam, but
answering the rein.
He found _Don_ Cazar, Bartolomé, and Hilario Trinfan waiting for him by
the corral. The mustanger walked forward with a lurch, his head thrown far
back so he could look up at Drew from under the wide brim of his sombrero.
"This you could not do with a true wild one," he commented.
"I know that, _señor_. This colt was not an enemy, one who has already
been hunted by man. He was only afraid...."
"But you have the gift. It is born in one—the gift. A man has it, and the
horse always knows, answers to it. Ride with me, _señor_, and try that
gift on the wild ones!"
"Someday—" That was true. Someday Drew did want to ride after the wild
ones. Anse’s stories of horse hunting on the Texas plains had first
stirred that desire. Now it was fully awake in him.
_Don_ Cazar inspected the black closely. "Well, Bartolomé, what have you
to say now?"
"_Señor_ Kirby knows his business," the Mexican admitted. "Though I think
also that this was no true wild one. He will make a good remount, but he
is no fighter such as others I have seen here."
Drew unsaddled and left the black in with Croaker; he fed both animals a
bait of oats. In the morning he would be at this again. And he still had
not solved the problem of roping. He could not expect Teodoro to come to
his aid a second time. He started slowly back to the bunkhouse.
"_Señor_—?"
Drew raised his wet head from the bunkhouse basin and reached out for a
sacking towel. "Yes?"