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 "damned 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 glasses
and swept a segment of the compass. 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 glass 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
horsemen passed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them,
after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. God
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 bum 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.
"Plumb streak of light," they said. "Just nacheral crazy fool when it
comes to running, that hoss is!"
And Marianne, for the first time truly appreciating how great was the
danger from which the mares had been saved, sighed as she looked them
over again, one by one. It had been a double triumph, this night's work.
Not only were the mares retaken, but they had proved their speed and
staying powers conclusively in the long run over the desert. Hervey
himself began hinting, as they rode on, that he would like "to clap a
saddle on that Lady Mary hoss, one of these days." In truth, her
purchase was vindicated completely and Marianne fell into a happy dream
of a ranch stocked with saddle horses all drawn from the blood of these
neat-footed mares. With such horses to offer, she could pick and cull
among the best "punchers" in the West.
Into the dream, appropriately enough, ran the neigh of a horse, long
drawn and shrill of pitch, interrupted by a sudden burst of
deep-throated curses from the riders. The six mares had come to a halt
with their beautiful heads raised to listen, and on a far-off hill, Mary
saw the signaler--a chestnut horse gleaming red in the morning light.
"It's him!" shouted Hervey. "The nervy devil has come back to give us a
look. Shorty, take a crack at him!"
For that matter, every man in the party was whipping his rifle out of
its holster as Mary raised her field glass hurriedly to study the
stranger. She focused on him clearly at once and it was a startling
thing to see the distant figure shoot suddenly close to her, distinct in
every detail, and every detail an item of perfect beauty. She gasped her
admiration and astonishment; mustang he might be, but the short line of
the back above and the long line below, the deep set of the shoulders,
the length of neck, the Arab perfection of head, would have allowed him
to pass unquestioned muster among a group of thoroughbreds, and a picked
group at that. He turned, at that instant, and galloped a short distance
along the crest, neighing again, and then paused like an expectant dog,
with one forefoot raised, a white-stockinged forefoot. Marianne gripped
the glass hard and then dropped it. By the liquid smoothness of that
gallop, by the white-stockinged forefoot, by something about his head,
and above all by what she knew of his cunning, she had recognized
Alcatraz. And where, in the first glimpse, she had been about to warn
the men not to shoot this peerless beauty, she now dropped the glass
with the memory of the trampling of Manuel Cordova rushing back across
her mind.
"It's Alcatraz!" she cried. "It's that chestnut I told you of at
Glosterville, Mr. Hervey. Oh, shoot and shoot to kill. He's a murderer--
not a horse!"
That injunction was not needed. The rifle spoke from the shoulder of
Shorty, but the stallion neither fell nor fled, and his challenging
neigh rang faintly down to them.
"Mind the mares!" shrilled Marianne suddenly. "They're starting for
him!!"
In fact, it seemed as though the report of the rifle had started the
Coles horses towards their late companion They went forward at a
high-stepping trot as horses will when their minds are not quite made up
about their course. Now, in obedience to shouted orders from Hervey, the
cowpunchers split into two groups and slipped away on either side to
head the truants; Marianne herself, spurring as hard as she could after
Hervey, heard the foreman groaning: "By God, d'you ever _see_ a hoss
stand up under gunfire like that?"
For as they galloped, the men were pumping in shot after shot wildly,
and Alcatraz did not stir! The firing merely served to rouse the mares
from trot to gallop, and from gallop to run. For the first time Marianne
mourned their speed. They glided away as though the horses of the
cowpunchers were running fetlock deep in mud; they shot up the slope
towards the distant stallion like six bright arrows.
Then came Hervey's last, despairing effort: "Pull up! Shorty! Slim! Pull
up and try to drop that devil!"
They obeyed; Marianne, racing blindly ahead, heard a clanguor of shots
behind her and riveted her eyes on the chestnut, waiting for him to
fall. But he did not fall. He seemed to challenge the bullets with his
lordly head and in another moment he was wheeling with the mares about
him. Even in her anguish, Marianne noted with a thrill of wonder that
though the Coles horses were racing at the top of their speed, the
stallion overtook them instantly and shot into the lead. For that
matter, handicapped with a wretched ride, staggering weak from
underfeeding, he had been good enough to beat them in Glosterville, and
now he was transformed by rich pasture and glorious freedom.
The whole group disappeared, and when she reached the crest in turn, she
saw them streaking far off, hopelessly beyond pursuit, and in the rear
labored a grey mare, sadly outrun. Then, as she drew rein, with the mare
heaving and swaying from exhaustion beneath her, she remembered the
words of Lew Hervey: "It'll take ten years to get the chestnut!"
Marianne dropped her face in her hands and burst into tears.
It was only a momentary surrender. When she turned back to join the
downheaded men on the home-trail--for it was worse than useless to
follow Alcatraz on such jaded horses--Marianne had rallied to continue
the fight. Ten years to capture Alcatraz and the mares he led? She swept
the forms of the cowpunchers with one of those all-embracing glances of
which few great men and all excited women are capable. Yes, old age
would capture Alcatraz before such men as these. For this trail there
was needed a spirit as much superior to other men in tireless endurance
and in speed as Alcatraz was superior to other horses. There was needed
a man who stood among his fellows as Alcatraz had stood on the
hillcrest, defiant, lordly, and free. And as the thought drove home in
her, Marianne uttered a little cry of triumph. All in a breath she had
it. Red Perris was the man!
But would he come? Yes, for the sake of such a battle as this he would
journey to the end of the world and give his services for nothing.