One Sunday, late in the afternoon, found Daylight across the bay in the
Piedmont hills back of Oakland. As usual, he was in a big motor-car,
though not his own, the guest of Swiftwater Bill, Luck's own darling,
who had come down to spend the clean-up of the seventh fortune wrung
from the frozen Arctic gravel. A notorious spender, his latest pile
was already on the fair road to follow the previous six. He it was, in
the first year of Dawson, who had cracked an ocean of champagne at
fifty dollars a quart; who, with the bottom of his gold-sack in sight,
had cornered the egg-market, at twenty-four dollars per dozen, to the
tune of one hundred and ten dozen, in order to pique the lady-love who
had jilted him; and he it was, paying like a prince for speed, who had
chartered special trains and broken all records between San Francisco
and New York. And here he was once more, the "luck-pup of hell," as
Daylight called him, throwing his latest fortune away with the same
old-time facility.
It was a merry party, and they had made a merry day of it, circling the
bay from San Francisco around by San Jose and up to Oakland, having
been thrice arrested for speeding, the third time, however, on the
Haywards stretch, running away with their captor. Fearing that a
telephone message to arrest them had been flashed ahead, they had
turned into the back-road through the hills, and now, rushing in upon
Oakland by a new route, were boisterously discussing what disposition
they should make of the constable.
"We'll come out at Blair Park in ten minutes," one of the men
announced. "Look here, Swiftwater, there's a crossroads right ahead,
with lots of gates, but it'll take us backcountry clear into Berkeley.
Then we can come back into Oakland from the other side, sneak across on
the ferry, and send the machine back around to-night with the
chauffeur."
But Swiftwater Bill failed to see why he should not go into Oakland by
way of Blair Park, and so decided.
The next moment, flying around a bend, the back-road they were not
going to take appeared. Inside the gate leaning out from her saddle
and just closing it, was a young woman on a chestnut sorrel. With his
first glimpse, Daylight felt there was something strangely familiar
about her. The next moment, straightening up in the saddle with a
movement he could not fail to identify, she put the horse into a
gallop, riding away with her back toward them. It was Dede Mason--he
remembered what Morrison had told him about her keeping a riding horse,
and he was glad she had not seen him in this riotous company.
Swiftwater Bill stood up, clinging with one hand to the back of the
front seat and waving the other to attract her attention. His lips were
pursed for the piercing whistle for which he was famous and which
Daylight knew of old, when Daylight, with a hook of his leg and a yank
on the shoulder, slammed the startled Bill down into his seat.
"You m-m-must know the lady," Swiftwater Bill spluttered.
"I sure do," Daylight answered, "so shut up."
"Well, I congratulate your good taste, Daylight. She's a peach, and
she rides like one, too."
Intervening trees at that moment shut her from view, and Swiftwater
Bill plunged into the problem of disposing of their constable, while
Daylight, leaning back with closed eyes, was still seeing Dede Mason
gallop off down the country road. Swiftwater Bill was right. She
certainly could ride. And, sitting astride, her seat was perfect.
Good for Dede! That was an added point, her having the courage to ride
in the only natural and logical manner. Her head as screwed on right,
that was one thing sure.
On Monday morning, coming in for dictation, he looked at her with new
interest, though he gave no sign of it; and the stereotyped business
passed off in the stereotyped way. But the following Sunday found him
on a horse himself, across the bay and riding through the Piedmont
hills. He made a long day of it, but no glimpse did he catch of Dede
Mason, though he even took the back-road of many gates and rode on into
Berkeley. Here, along the lines of multitudinous houses, up one street
and down another, he wondered which of them might be occupied by her.
Morrison had said long ago that she lived in Berkeley, and she had been
headed that way in the late afternoon of the previous Sunday--evidently
returning home.
It had been a fruitless day, so far as she was concerned; and yet not
entirely fruitless, for he had enjoyed the open air and the horse under
him to such purpose that, on Monday, his instructions were out to the
dealers to look for the best chestnut sorrel that money could buy. At
odd times during the week he examined numbers of chestnut sorrels,
tried several, and was unsatisfied. It was not till Saturday that he
came upon Bob. Daylight knew him for what he wanted the moment he laid
eyes on him. A large horse for a riding animal, he was none too large
for a big man like Daylight. In splendid condition, Bob's coat in the
sunlight was a flame of fire, his arched neck a jeweled conflagration.
"He's a sure winner," was Daylight's comment; but the dealer was not so
sanguine. He was selling the horse on commission, and its owner had
insisted on Bob's true character being given. The dealer gave it.
"Not what you'd call a real vicious horse, but a dangerous one. Full of
vinegar and all-round cussedness, but without malice. Just as soon kill
you as not, but in a playful sort of way, you understand, without
meaning to at all. Personally, I wouldn't think of riding him. But
he's a stayer. Look at them lungs. And look at them legs. Not a
blemish. He's never been hurt or worked. Nobody ever succeeded in
taking it out of him. Mountain horse, too, trail-broke and all that,
being raised in rough country. Sure-footed as a goat, so long as he
don't get it into his head to cut up. Don't shy. Ain't really afraid,
but makes believe. Don't buck, but rears. Got to ride him with a
martingale. Has a bad trick of whirling around without cause It's his
idea of a joke on his rider. It's all just how he feels One day he'll
ride along peaceable and pleasant for twenty miles. Next day, before
you get started, he's well-nigh unmanageable. Knows automobiles so he
can lay down alongside of one and sleep or eat hay out of it. He'll
let nineteen go by without batting an eye, and mebbe the twentieth,
just because he's feeling frisky, he'll cut up over like a range
cayuse. Generally speaking, too lively for a gentleman, and too
unexpected. Present owner nicknamed him Judas Iscariot, and refuses to
sell without the buyer knowing all about him first. There, that's
about all I know, except look at that mane and tail. Ever see anything
like it? Hair as fine as a baby's."
The dealer was right. Daylight examined the mane and found it finer
than any horse's hair he had ever seen. Also, its color was unusual in
that it was almost auburn. While he ran his fingers through it, Bob
turned his head and playfully nuzzled Daylight's shoulder.
"Saddle him up, and I'll try him," he told the dealer. "I wonder if
he's used to spurs. No English saddle, mind. Give me a good Mexican
and a curb bit--not too severe, seeing as he likes to rear."
Daylight superintended the preparations, adjusting the curb strap and
the stirrup length, and doing the cinching. He shook his head at the
martingale, but yielded to the dealer's advice and allowed it to go on.
And Bob, beyond spirited restlessness and a few playful attempts, gave
no trouble. Nor in the hour's ride that followed, save for some
permissible curveting and prancing, did he misbehave. Daylight was
delighted; the purchase was immediately made; and Bob, with riding gear
and personal equipment, was despatched across the bay forthwith to take
up his quarters in the stables of the Oakland Riding Academy.
The next day being Sunday, Daylight was away early, crossing on the
ferry and taking with him Wolf, the leader of his sled team, the one
dog which he had selected to bring with him when he left Alaska. Quest
as he would through the Piedmont hills and along the many-gated
back-road to Berkeley, Daylight saw nothing of Dede Mason and her
chestnut sorrel. But he had little time for disappointment, for his
own chestnut sorrel kept him busy. Bob proved a handful of impishness
and contrariety, and he tried out his rider as much as his rider tried
him out. All of Daylight's horse knowledge and horse sense was called
into play, while Bob, in turn, worked every trick in his lexicon.
Discovering that his martingale had more slack in it than usual, he
proceeded to give an exhibition of rearing and hind-leg walking. After
ten hopeless minutes of it, Daylight slipped off and tightened the
martingale, whereupon Bob gave an exhibition of angelic goodness.
He fooled Daylight completely. At the end of half an hour of goodness,
Daylight, lured into confidence, was riding along at a walk and rolling
a cigarette, with slack knees and relaxed seat, the reins lying on the
animal's neck. Bob whirled abruptly and with lightning swiftness,
pivoting on his hind legs, his fore legs just lifted clear of the
ground. Daylight found himself with his right foot out of the stirrup
and his arms around the animal's neck; and Bob took advantage of the
situation to bolt down the road. With a hope that he should not
encounter Dede Mason at that moment, Daylight regained his seat and
checked in the horse.
Arrived back at the same spot, Bob whirled again. This time Daylight
kept his seat, but, beyond a futile rein across the neck, did nothing
to prevent the evolution. He noted that Bob whirled to the right, and
resolved to keep him straightened out by a spur on the left. But so
abrupt and swift was the whirl that warning and accomplishment were
practically simultaneous.
"Well, Bob," he addressed the animal, at the same time wiping the sweat
from his own eyes, "I'm free to confess that you're sure the blamedest
all-fired quickest creature I ever saw. I guess the way to fix you is
to keep the spur just a-touching--ah! you brute!"
For, the moment the spur touched him, his left hind leg had reached
forward in a kick that struck the stirrup a smart blow. Several times,
out of curiosity, Daylight attempted the spur, and each time Bob's hoof
landed the stirrup. Then Daylight, following the horse's example of
the unexpected, suddenly drove both spurs into him and reached him
underneath with the quirt.
"You ain't never had a real licking before," he muttered as Bob, thus
rudely jerked out of the circle of his own impish mental processes,
shot ahead.
Half a dozen times spurs and quirt bit into him, and then Daylight
settled down to enjoy the mad magnificent gallop. No longer punished,
at the end of a half mile Bob eased down into a fast canter. Wolf,
toiling in the rear, was catching up, and everything was going nicely.
"I'll give you a few pointers on this whirling game, my boy," Daylight
was saying to him, when Bob whirled.
He did it on a gallop, breaking the gallop off short by fore legs
stiffly planted. Daylight fetched up against his steed's neck with
clasped arms, and at the same instant, with fore feet clear of the
ground, Bob whirled around. Only an excellent rider could have escaped
being unhorsed, and as it was, Daylight was nastily near to it. By the
time he recovered his seat, Bob was in full career, bolting the way he
had come, and making Wolf side-jump to the bushes.
"All right, darn you!" Daylight grunted, driving in spurs and quirt
again and again. "Back-track you want to go, and back-track you sure
will go till you're dead sick of it."
When, after a time, Bob attempted to ease down the mad pace, spurs and
quirt went into him again with undiminished vim and put him to renewed
effort. And when, at last, Daylight decided that the horse had had
enough, he turned him around abruptly and put him into a gentle canter
on the forward track. After a time he reined him in to a stop to see
if he were breathing painfully.
Standing for a minute, Bob turned his head and nuzzled his rider's
stirrup in a roguish, impatient way, as much as to intimate that it was
time they were going on.
"Well, I'll be plumb gosh darned!" was Daylight's comment. "No
ill-will, no grudge, no nothing-and after that lambasting! You're sure
a hummer, Bob."
Once again Daylight was lulled into fancied security. For an hour Bob
was all that could be desired of a spirited mount, when, and as usual
without warning, he took to whirling and bolting. Daylight put a stop
to this with spurs and quirt, running him several punishing miles in
the direction of his bolt. But when he turned him around and started
forward, Bob proceeded to feign fright at trees, cows, bushes, Wolf,
his own shadow--in short, at every ridiculously conceivable object. At
such times, Wolf lay down in the shade and looked on, while Daylight
wrestled it out.
So the day passed. Among other things, Bob developed a trick of making
believe to whirl and not whirling. This was as exasperating as the
real thing, for each time Daylight was fooled into tightening his leg
grip and into a general muscular tensing of all his body. And then,
after a few make-believe attempts, Bob actually did whirl and caught
Daylight napping again and landed him in the old position with clasped
arms around the neck.
And to the end of the day, Bob continued to be up to one trick or
another; after passing a dozen automobiles on the way into Oakland,
suddenly electing to go mad with fright at a most ordinary little
runabout. And just before he arrived back at the stable he capped the
day with a combined whirling and rearing that broke the martingale and
enabled him to gain a perpendicular position on his hind legs. At this
juncture a rotten stirrup leather parted, and Daylight was all but
unhorsed.
But he had taken a liking to the animal, and repented not of his
bargain. He realized that Bob was not vicious nor mean, the trouble
being that he was bursting with high spirits and was endowed with more
than the average horse's intelligence. It was the spirits and the
intelligence, combined with inordinate roguishness, that made him what
he was. What was required to control him was a strong hand, with
tempered sternness and yet with the requisite touch of brutal dominance.
"It's you or me, Bob," Daylight told him more than once that day.
And to the stableman, that night:--
"My, but ain't he a looker! Ever see anything like him? Best piece of
horseflesh I ever straddled, and I've seen a few in my time."
And to Bob, who had turned his head and was up to his playful
nuzzling:--
"Good-by, you little bit of all right. See you again next Sunday A.M.,
and just you bring along your whole basket of tricks, you old
son-of-a-gun."