A BATTLE ROYAL.
Jack struggled to his feet and surveyed the scene of his disaster
with dismay. A brief examination of his fallen horse told him that it
would be impossible to continue his flight on the animal. Its knees
were cut and bruised, and it lay with an expression of dumb suffering
in its eyes that touched the sorely-tried lad’s heart. If he had not
dropped his little rifle in the excitement of his escape he would have
despatched the creature,—risking the chance of detection from the
sound of the report.
“Well, here’s where I take to Shank’s mare,” murmured Jack, setting off
once more,—when something whistled through the air and settled about
his neck in a stifling coil.
It was a rawhide lasso, hurled with deadly accuracy by Ramon, who had
entered the glade just as Jack arose from his examination of the
fallen horse.
Before the boy had time to realize what had occurred, he was yanked
from his feet and thrown violently to the ground for the second time.
“So I’ve got you fast and tight, at last, eh,” sneered Ramon
vindictively, gazing down from his great horse at the crestfallen,
dust-covered boy.
“Well, my young senor,” he continued, with a vicious intonation, “I can
promise you that this time you will not escape so easily. This will be
a treat for the boys.”
Jack answered nothing. He struggled to rise but the rope was given
a jerk by his captor which brought him to the ground once more. He
could almost have cried with humiliation. At the moment this was his
overmastering feeling. Of fear he felt little, but he would have given
a lot just then to stand up with Black Ramon in a twenty-four-foot
ring!
Having “thrown” poor Jack very much as he might have done a refractory
calf, the outlaw turned his attention to the injured horse.
“So you have ruined one of our horses, too, you Yankee pig,” he
snarled; “well, it only makes one more score to settle up with you.”
He drew one of his big revolvers from its chased leather holster, and
carefully aiming it, shot the mortally injured animal between the eyes.
The creature gave a convulsive shudder and straightened out,—dead.
Without another word Ramon swung his black around, and before he could
make a move Jack found himself being dragged over the rough ground at
a swift pace. Within a few yards his side was bruised and cut, and the
clothing torn from him.
“Great heavens, if this keeps up I shall be unable to move hand or
foot,” thought Jack in dismay.
For a moment his heart failed him, and then he suddenly bethought
himself of his knife. To reach it in his side pocket—for his arms
were partially free,—was the work of an instant, and with one quick
slash he cut the rawhide that bound him.
Released of its burden thus suddenly, the sure-footed black lost its
footing and almost stumbled.
“Diablo!” Jack heard Ramon shrill out as the Border Boy gave one quick
leap into the dense woods.
When Ramon looked around there was not a trace of the lad he had had at
the end of his lariat. Instead, a broken end of the rope dangled on the
ground, its ends frayed out.
“Maledictions!” he yelled, all the fury of his Latin blood boiling
to the surface in an ungovernable flood. “That cursed gringo pup has
fooled me once more.”
In one of those meaningless frenzies of rage into which his countrymen
are apt to fall when thwarted in anything, Ramon began to vent his
rage on the first animate object to hand. This was the black horse. On
the beautiful creature’s shiny coat the cruel blows of the Mexican’s
lariat fell furiously, raising great welts across the glossy surface.
For an instant the black quivered and stood motionless. The suddenness
of the attack dazed it. But the next moment, its rage,—as ungoverned
as that of its master, surged up in its equine heart. With an angry
squeal it gave a succession of huge bucks which would have unseated any
ordinary—or extraordinary rider,—but which did not even disturb the
Mexican’s seat.
Then followed a magnificent exhibition of man versus horse. And it was
not without its watchers—this Homeric struggle for supremacy between
maddened man and maddened beast.
Jack, from his hiding place in the ferns and brush, heard the sounds
and almost unconsciously he drew closer to the scene of the combat.
Parting the ferns he peered through cautiously, and then was held
spellbound.
If he were to have been captured for it the next instant he could not
have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle.
With clenched teeth and face that was yellow and drawn with rage, Ramon
plied quirt and spur. The big rowelled instruments he wore tore great
streaks in the black’s glossy hide. All the time his quirt fell in a
perfect hailstorm of blows about the noble animal’s flanks.
But if Ramon’s rage was impressive from its very vindictiveness, how
much more so was the just anger of the big horse.
Its delicately pointed ears were pressed close back to its shapely
head, while its eye gleamed whitely. As the big silver-mounted bit of
the barbarous Mexican pattern cut and gored its sensitive mouth, the
animal champed and snapped,—like a rabid dog,—till its great chest
was flecked with blood and foam. But it was unsubdued, as unconquered
as its master.
“By George, what a rider!” was the involuntary exclamation of
admiration forced from Jack as he watched.
And the next moment.
“Gracious, what a horse!”
Suddenly the black reared straight upward, beating the air with its
forelegs. For a breath it swayed and balanced perfectly, and then,
losing its equilibrium—perhaps purposely—it fell backward.
A cry of alarm broke, against his will, from Jack’s whitened lips.
Ramon’s death seemed certain. But instead of the black crushing his
body in its fall, the agile Mexican was out of the saddle with the
agility of an eel, and as the black leaped erect once more its master
was back in the saddle breathing fresh maledictions and flogging and
rowelling more unmercifully than ever.
But from that time on, there was no question but that the animal
realized that it had met its match. Its bucks were no longer great,
animated, splendid leaps, driven by the force of its powerful muscles.
Instead, they were limp and dispirited.
But Ramon seemed bent on thoroughly humiliating the animal. Jack’s
blood began to boil as he saw the brutal punishment increasing in
violence as the black grew more and more subjugated. Its sunken flanks
heaved, its limbs trembled and actual tears rolled down its cheeks; but
Ramon still flogged and beat and spurred as furiously as ever.
“Oh, that such a rider should be such a brute!” thought Jack, watching
the scene from his place of concealment.
“This has got to stop,” he determined the next instant. So great was
his anger at the brutal exhibition that had he had his small rifle he
would almost have risked crippling one of the Mexican’s arms or legs in
order to end the sickening brutality.
But if Jack had not a rifle, he had another weapon perhaps even more
efficacious in his hands. It will be recalled that Jack had performed
some remarkable feats of pitching at Stonefell College, notably in
the great game between West Point and Stonefell. What more natural
then than that he should select from the plenty about him, a small,
well-rounded stone, somewhat smaller than a league ball.
Feeling sure that Ramon was too intent on his punishment to notice
anything else, Jack stepped boldly to the edge of the little clearing,
and with a preliminary twist he sent the stone hurtling straight and
true at the head of the black’s tormentor.
Like a tree that has felt the woodsman’s axe, Ramon threw up his hands
as the stone struck him, and without a sound pitched out of the saddle,
crashing in a heap on the ground.
Jack felt rather alarmed as he saw this. He had not intended to throw
quite so hard. For an instant a dreadful fear that he had killed
Ramon—rascal though the man was,—clutched at his heart.
Coming boldly out from his place of concealment he hastened to the
fallen man’s side.