Part 4

Facing him was the man on the bay. His mount stood with feet braced, sitting back on the rope, and he and his rider were quite collected and cool and prepared. The sorrel’s eyes were starting from his head; his nostrils flared wide, gaping for the air that was denied him, and the breath sucked in his throat. It seemed as if he must drop. Suddenly the buster touched his horse lightly with the spur and slackened the rope. With a long sob, Corazón drew in a life-giving draught, his gaze fixed in frightened appeal on his captor.

“Open the gate,” said Mullins, without raising his voice.

He flicked the rope over Corazón’s hind quarters, and essayed to drive him into the next corral, to cut him off from his fellows. The sorrel gave a gasp of dismay and lunged forward. Again he was lifted from the ground, and came down with a thud that left him shivering.

“His laig’s done bust!” exclaimed the boss.

“No; he’s shook up, that’s all. Wait awhile.”

A moment later Corazón raised his head painfully; then, life and courage coming back with a rush, he lurched to his feet. Mullins waited with unabated patience. The sorrel was beginning to respect that which encircled his neck and made naught of his strength, and when the buster flipped the rope again, he ran through the small gate, and brought up before he had reached the end of his tether.

Two of the cowboys stepped down languidly from the fence, and took position in the center of the corral.

“Hi, Corazón! Go it, boy!” they yelled, and spurred by their cries, the horse started off at a trot. Reb tossed his loop,--flung it carelessly, with a sinuous movement of the wrist,--and when Corazón had gone a few yards, he found his forefeet ensnared. Enraged at being thus cramped, he bucked and bawled; but, before Reb could settle on the rope, he came to a standstill and sank his teeth into the strands. Once, twice, thrice he tugged, but could make no impression. Then he pitched high in air, and--

“NOW!” shrieked Reb.

They heaved with might and main, and Corazón flopped in the dust. Quick as a cat, he sprang upright and bolted; but again they downed him, and, while Reb held the head by straddling the neck, his confederate twined dexterously with a stake-rope. There lay Corazón, helpless and almost spent, trussed up like a sheep for market: they had hog-tied him.

It was the buster who put the hackamore on his head. Very deliberately he moved. Corazón sensed confidence in the touch of his fingers; they spoke a language to him, and he was soothed by the sureness of superiority they conveyed. He lay quiet. Then Reb incautiously shifted his position, and the horse heaved and raised his head, banging Mullins across the ear. The buster’s senses swam, but instead of flying into a rage, he became quieter, more deliberate; in his cold eyes was a vengeful gleam, and dangerous stealth lurked in his delicate manipulation of the strands. An excruciating pain shot through the sorrel’s eye: Mullins had gouged him.

“Let him up.” It was the buster again, atop the bay, making the rope fast with a double half-hitch over the horn of the saddle.

Corazón arose, dazed and very sick. But his spirit was unbreakable. Again and again he strove to tear loose, rearing, falling back, plunging to the end of the rope until he was hurled off his legs to the ground. When he began to weary, Mullins encouraged him to fight, that he might toss him.

“I’ll learn you what this rope means,” he remarked, as the broncho scattered the dust for the ninth time, and remained there, completely done up.

In deadly fear of his slender tether, yet alert to match his strength against it once more, should opportunity offer, Corazón followed the buster quietly enough when he rode out into the open. Beside a sturdy mesquite bush that grew apart from its brethren, Mullins dismounted and tied the sorrel. As a farewell he waved his arms and whooped. Of course Corazón gathered himself and leaped--leaped to the utmost that was in him, so that the bush vibrated to its farthest root; and of course he hit the earth with a jarring thump that temporarily paralyzed him. Mullins departed to put the thrall of human will on others.

Throughout the afternoon, and time after time during the interminable night, the sorrel tried to break away, but with each sickening failure he grew more cautious. When he ran against the rope now, he did not run blindly to its limit, but half wheeled, so that when it jerked him back he invariably landed on his feet. Corazón was learning hard, but he was learning. And what agonies of pain and suspense he went through!--for years a free rover, and now to be bound thus, by what looked to be a mere thread, for he knew not what further tortures! He sweated and shivered, seeing peril in every shadow. When a coyote slunk by with tongue lapping hungrily over his teeth, the prisoner almost broke his neck in a despairing struggle to win freedom.

In the chill of the dawn they led him into a circular corral. His sleekness had departed; the barrel-like body did not look so well nourished, and there was red in the blazing eyes.

“I reckon he’ll be mean,” observed the buster, as though it concerned him but little.

“No-o-o. Go easy with him, Carl, and I think he’ll make a good hoss,” the boss cautioned.

While two men held the rope, Mullins advanced along it foot by foot, inch by inch, one hand outstretched, and talked to Corazón in a low, careless tone of affectionate banter. “So you’d like for to kill me, would you?” he inquired, grinning. All the while he held the sorrel’s gaze.

Corazón stood still, legs planted wide apart, and permitted him to approach. He trembled when the fingers touched his nose; but they were firm, confident digits, the voice was reassuring, and the gentle rubbing up, up between the eyes and ears lulled his forebodings.

“Hand me the blanket,” said Mullins.

He drew it softly over Corazón’s back, and the broncho swerved, pawed, and kicked with beautiful precision. Whereupon they placed a rope around his neck, dropped it behind his right hind leg, then pulled that member up close to his belly; there it was held fast. On three legs now, the sorrel was impotent for harm. Mullins once more took up the blanket but this time the gentleness had flown. He slapped it over Corazón’s backbone from side to side a dozen times. At each impact the horse humped awkwardly, but, finding that he came to no hurt, he suffered it in resignation.

That much of the second lesson learned, they saddled him. Strangely enough, Corazón submitted to the operation without fuss, the only untoward symptoms being a decided upward slant to the back of the saddle and the tucking of his tail. Reb waggled his head over this exhibition.

“I don’t like his standing quiet that away; it ain’t natural,” he vouchsafed. “Look at the crick in his back. Jim-in-ee! he’ll shore pitch.”

Which he did. The cinches were tightened until Corazón’s eyes almost popped from his head; then they released the bound leg and turned him loose. What was that galling his spine? Corazón took a startled peep at it, lowered his head between his knees, and began to bawl. Into the air he rocketed, his head and forelegs swinging to the left, his hind quarters weaving to the right. The jar of his contact with the ground was appalling. Into the air again, his head and forelegs to the right, his rump twisted to the left. Round and round the corral he went, blatting like an angry calf; but the thing on his back stayed where it was, gripping his body cruelly. At last he was fain to stop for breath.

“Now,” said Mullins, “I reckon I’ll take it out of him.”

There has always been for me an overwhelming fascination in watching busters at work. They have underlying traits in common when it comes to handling the horses--the garrulous one becomes coldly watchful, the Stoic moves with stern patience, the boaster soothes with soft-crooned words and confident caress. Mullins left Corazón standing in the middle of the corral, the hackamore rope strung loose on the ground, while he saw to it that his spurs were fast. We mounted the fence, not wishing to be mixed in the glorious turmoil to follow.

“I wouldn’t top ol’ Corazón for fifty,” confessed the man on the adjoining post.

“Mullins has certainly got nerve,” I conceded.

“A buster has got to have nerve.” The range boss delivered himself laconically. “All nerve and no brains makes the best. But they get stove up and then--”

“And then? What then?”

“Why, don’t you know?” he asked in surprise. “Every buster loses his nerve at last, and then they can’t ride a pack-hoss. It must be because it’s one fool man with one set of nerves up ag’in a new hoss with a new devil in him every time. They wear him down. Don’t you reckon?”

The explanation sounded plausible. Mullins was listening with a faintly amused smile to Reb’s account of what a lady mule had done to him; he rolled a cigarette and lighted it painstakingly. The hands that held the match were steady as eternal rock. It was maddening to see him stand there so coolly while the big sorrel, a dozen feet distant, was a-quake with dread, blowing harshly through his crimson nostrils whenever a cowboy stirred--and each of us knowing that the man was taking his life in his hands. An unlooked-for twist, a trifling disturbance of poise, and, with a horse like Corazón, it meant maiming or death. At last he threw the cigarette from him and walked slowly to the rope.

“So you’re calling for me?” he inquired, gathering it up.

Corazón was snorting. By patient craft Reb acquired a grip on the sorrel’s ears, and, while he hung there, bringing the head down so that the horse could not move, Mullins tested the stirrups and raised himself cautiously into the saddle.

“Let him go.”

While one could count ten, Corazón stood expectant, his back bowed, his tail between his legs. The ears were laid flat on the head and the forefeet well advanced. The buster waited, the quirt hanging from two fingers of his right hand. Suddenly the sorrel ducked his head and emitted a harsh scream, leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground. He came down with the massive hips at an angle to the shoulders, thereby imparting a double shock; bounded high again, turned back with bewildering speed as he touched the earth; and then, in a circle perhaps twenty feet in diameter, sprang time after time, his heels lashing the air. Never had such pitching been seen on the Anvil Range.

“I swan, he just misses his tail a’ inch when he turns back!” roared a puncher.

Mullins sat composedly in the saddle, but he was riding as never before. He whipped the sorrel at every jump and raked him down the body from shoulder to loins with the ripping spurs. The brute gave no signs of letting up. Through Mullins’ tan of copper hue showed a slight pallor. He was exhausted. If Corazón did not give in soon, the man would be beaten. Just then the horse stopped, feet a-sprawl.

“Mullins,”--the range boss got down from the fence,--“you’ll kill that hoss. Between the cinches belongs to you; the head and hind quarters is the company’s.”

For a long minute Mullins stared at the beast’s ears without replying.

“I reckon that’s the rule,” he acquiesced heavily. “Do you want that somebody else should ride him?”

“No-o-o. Go ahead. But, remember, between the cinches you go at him as you like--nowhere else.”

The buster slapped the quirt down on Corazón’s shoulder, but the broncho did not budge; then harder. With the first oath he had used, he jabbed in the spurs and lay back on the hackamore rope. Instead of bucking, Corazón reared straight up, his feet pawing like the hands of a drowning man. Before Mullins could move to step off, the sorrel flung his head round and toppled backward.

“No, he’s not dead.” The range boss leaned over the buster and his hands fumbled inside the shirt. “The horn got him here, but he ain’t dead. Claude, saddle Streak and hit for Agua Prieta for the doctor.”

When we had carried the injured man to the bunk-house, Reb spoke from troubled meditation:

“Pete, I don’t believe Corazón is as bad as he acts with Mullins. I’ve been watching him. Mullins, he didn’t--”

“You take him, then; he’s yours,” snapped the boss, his conscience pricking because of the reproof he had administered. If the buster had ridden him his own way, this might not have happened.

That is how the sorrel came into Reb’s possession. Only one man of the outfit witnessed the taming, and he would not talk; but when Reb came to dinner from the first saddle on Corazón, his hands were torn and the nail of one finger hung loose.

“I had to take to the horn and hang on some,” he admitted.

Ay, he had clung there desperately while the broncho pitched about the river-bed, whither Reb had retired for safety and to escape spectators. But at the next saddle Corazón was less violent; at the third, recovering from the stunning shocks and bruisings of the first day, he was a fiend; and then, on the following morning, he did not pitch at all. Reb rode him every day to sap the superfluous vigor in Corazón’s iron frame and he taught him as well as he could the first duties of a cowhorse. Finding that his new master never punished him unless he undertook to dispute his authority, the sorrel grew tractable and began to take an interest in his tasks.

“He’s done broke,” announced Reb; “I’ll have him bridle-wise in a week. He’ll make some roping horse. Did you see him this evening? I swan--”

They scoffed good-naturedly; but Reb proceeded on the assumption that Corazón was meant to be a roping horse, and schooled him accordingly. As for the sorrel, he took to the new pastime with delight. Within a month nothing gave him keener joy than to swerve and crouch at the climax of a sprint and see a cow thrown heels over head at the end of the rope that was wrapped about his saddle-horn.

The necessity of contriving to get three meals a day took me elsewhere, and I did not see Corazón again for three years. Then, one Sunday afternoon, Big John drew me from El Paso to Juarez on the pretense of seeing a grand, an extraordinary, a most noble bull-fight, in which the dauntless Favorita would slay three fierce bulls from the renowned El Carmen ranch, in “competency” with the fearless Morenito Chico de San Bernardo; and a youth with a megaphone drew us both to a steer-roping contest instead. We agreed that bull-fighting was brutal on the Sabbath.

“I’ll bet it’s rotten,” remarked Big John pessimistically, as we took our seats. “I could beat ’em myself.”

As he scanned the list, his face brightened. Among the seventeen ropers thereon were two champions and a possible new one in Raphael Fraustro, the redoubtable vaquero from the domain of Terrazas.

“And here’s Reb!” roared John--he is accustomed to converse in the tumult of the branding-pen--“I swan, he’s entered from Monument.”

Shortly afterwards the contestants paraded, wonderfully arrayed in silk shirts and new handkerchiefs.

“Some of them ain’t been clean before in a year,” was John’s caustic comment. “There’s Slim; I KNOW he hasn’t.”

They were a fine-looking body of men, and two of my neighbors complained that I trampled on their feet. The horses caught the infection of excitement from the packed stands and champed on their bits and caracoled and waltzed sideways in a manner highly unbecoming a staid cow-pony.

There was one that did not. So sluggish was his gait and general bearing, in contrast to the others, that the crowd burst into laughter. He plodded at the tail-end of the procession, his hoofs kicking up the dust in listless spurts, his nose on a level with his knees. I rubbed my eyes and John said, “No, it ain’t--it can’t be--”; but it was. Into that arena slouched Corazón, entered against the pick of the horses of the Southwest; and Reb was astride him.

We watched the ropers catch and tie the steers in rapid succession, but the much-heralded ones missed altogether, and to John and me the performance lagged. We were waiting for Reb and Corazón.

They came at last, at the end of the list. When Corazón ambled up the arena to enter behind the barrier, the grandstand roared a facetious welcome; the spectacle of this sad-gaited nag preparing to capture a steer touched its risibilities.

“Listen to me,” bawled a fat gentleman in a wide-brimmed hat, close to my ear. “You listen to me! They’re all fools. That’s a cowhorse. No blasted nonsense. Knows his business, huh? You’re damn whistlin’!”

Assuredly, Corazón knew his business. The instant he stepped behind the line he was a changed horse. The flopping ears pricked forward, his neck arched, and the great muscles of his shoulders and thighs rippled to his dainty prancing. He pulled and fretted on the bit, his eyes roving about in search of the quarry; he whinnied an appeal to be gone. Reb made ready his coil, curbing him with light pressure.

Out from the chute sprang a steer, heading straight down the arena. Corazón was frantic. With the flash of the gun he breasted the barrier-rope and swept down on him in twenty strides. Reb stood high in the stirrups; the loop whirled and sped; and, without waiting to see how it fell, but accepting a catch in blind faith, the sorrel started off at a tangent.

Big John was standing up in his place, clawing insanely at the hats of his neighbors and banging them on the head with his programme.

“Look at him--just look at him!” he shrieked.

The steer was tossed clear of the ground and came down on his left side. Almost before he landed, Reb was out of the saddle and speeding toward him.

“He’s getting up. HE’S GETTING UP. Go to him, Reb!” howled John and I.

The steer managed to lift his head; he was struggling to his knees. I looked away, for Reb must lose. Then a hoarse shout from the multitude turned back my gaze. Corazón had felt the slack on the rope and knew what it meant. He dug his feet into the dirt and began to walk slowly forward--very slowly and carefully, for Reb’s task must not be spoiled. The steer collapsed, falling prone again, but the sorrel did not stop. Once he cocked his eye, and seeing that the animal still squirmed, pulled with all his strength. The stands were rocking; they were a sea of tossing hats and gesticulating arms and flushed faces; the roar of their plaudits echoed back from the hills. And it was all for Corazón, gallant Corazón.

“Dam’ his eyes--dam’ his ol’ eyes!” Big John babbled over and over, absolutely oblivious.

Reb stooped beside the steer, his hands looping and tying with deft darting twists even as he kept pace with his dragged victim.

“I guess it’s--about--a--hour,” he panted.

Then he sprang clear and tossed his hands upward, facing the judges’ stand. After that he walked aimlessly about, mopping his face with a handkerchief; for to him the shoutings and the shifting colors were all a foolish dream, and he was rather sick.

Right on the cry with which his master announced his task done, Corazón eased up on the rope and waited.

“Mr. Pee-ler’s time,” bellowed the man with the megaphone presently, “is twenty-one seconds, ty-ing the world’s re-cord.”

So weak that his knees trembled, Reb walked over to his horse. “Corazón,” he said huskily, and slapped him once on the flank.

Nothing would do the joyous crowd then but that Reb should ride forth to be acclaimed the victor. We sat back and yelled ourselves weak with laughter, for Corazón, having done his work, refused resolutely to squander time in vain parade. The steer captured and tied, he had no further interest in the proceedings. The rascal dog-trotted reluctantly to the center of the arena in obedience to Reb, then faced the audience; but, all the time Reb was bowing his acknowledgments, Corazón sulked and slouched, and he was sulking and shuffling the dust when they went through the gate.

“Now,” said John, who is very human, “we’ll go help Reb spend that money.”

As we jostled amid the outgoing crowd, several cowboys came alongside the grandstand rail, and Big John drew me aside to have speech with them. One rider led a spare horse and when he passed a man on foot, the latter hailed him:

“Say, Ed, give me a lift to the hotel?”

“Sure,” answered Ed, proffering the reins.

The man gathered them up, his hands fluttering as if with palsy, and paused with his foot raised toward the stirrup.

“He won’t pitch nor nothing, Ed?” came the quavered inquiry. “You’re shore he’s gentle?”

“Gentler’n a dog,” returned Ed, greatly surprised.

“You ain’t fooling me, now, are you, Ed?” continued the man on the ground. “He looks kind of mean.”

“Give him to me!” Ed exploded. “You kin walk.”

From where we stood, only the man’s back was visible. “Who is that fellow?” I asked.

“Who? Him?” answered my neighbor. “Oh, his name’s Mullins. They say he used to be able to ride anything with hair on it, and throw off the bridle at that. I expect that’s just talk. Don’t you reckon?”

IV THE OUTLAW

Steve was recounting an episode of Hell’s Acre.

“And jist as I was fighting my horse to make him go through that scrub-oak, he done stubbed his toe in the sand. Up she come with a whoof--one of them ol’ long-horns. That cow had hid herself there. Yes, sir; but she didn’t quite git her horns covered.”

Reb said he could well believe it. No longer ago than last Tuesday, while chasing some stubborn cattle, he had chanced upon a cow lying flat behind a bush. A jackrabbit was burying her under leaves, for better concealment.

Whereupon the two got to horse and rode away, leaving behind them a thoughtful silence.

There was a water-gap to be repaired and they headed for the Salt Fork of the Brazos.

“Wait a minute,” said Steve. “Look there.”

A cow stood on the crest of a rise--a lean, dun creature, with distended eyes. When they approached, she trotted off to the right, mumbling anxiously. They did not follow. Then she stopped, her head erect and nostrils dilated, to watch them. The two ambled forward and she kept near, very, very anxious.

“She’s got a calf hid out somewheres,” Reb remarked.

He surveyed the immediate country leisurely, confident of what he would discover. Two hundred yards in front was a patch of mesquite, and they made for it. Behind a bush they found the calf--a sturdy, red-and-white baby with a specially black, moist nose. It flattened out when Steve stood over it.

“Git up,” he commanded, “I want to see more of you. I bet them hoofs of yours is soft.”

The calf hugged the ground. He raised the sagging body by the brisket and tail, none too gently. When he let go, the little fellow collapsed, spread out like a jellyfish. He must have marveled as he lay there, rolling his wide, questioning eyes upward, what strange beings these were, for he was just one day old and had never seen a man.

“Come a li’l’ seven,” Steve cried joyously. “Look a-here, Reb. See his face.”

Between the youngster’s eyes was a crimson splash which made a perfect 7. Reb examined the peculiar marking with interest and suggested that Come-a-Seven might bring the little devil luck as a name.

The calf resented all this handling and raised his voice in a plaintive bawl. As they loped away on their errand, the cow crashed through the bushes to her offspring’s side. She nosed him solicitously, rumbling caresses.