The Max Brand Megapack (418 page)

He rambled on with a growing enthusiasm.

“And think of a hoss like that being given away!”

“Given away?” said Bull with a sudden interest.

And then he remembered that horses were outside of his education entirely.

He listened with gloomy attention while his host went on. “Yes, sir. Given away is what I said and given away is what I mean. Old Chick Bridewell has kept him long enough, he says. He’s tired of paying buckaroos for getting busted up trying to ride that hoss. Man-eater, that’s what he calls Diablo, and he wants to give the hoss away to the first man that can ride him. Hal Dunbar heard about it and sent up word that he was coming up to ride him.”

“He must be a brave man,” said Bull innocently. He had an immense capacity for admiring others.

“Brave?” The proprietor paused as though this had not occurred to him before. “Why, they ain’t such a thing as fear in Hal Dunbar, I guess. But if he decides to ride Diablo, he’ll ride him, well enough. He has his way about things, Hal Dunbar does.”

The sketchy portrait impressed Bull Hunter greatly. “You know him, then?”

“How’d I be mistaking you for him if I knowed him? No, he lives way down south, but they’s a pile heard about him that’s never seen him.”

For some reason the words of his host remained in the mind of Bull as he went down the road that day. Oddly enough, he pictured man and horse as being somewhat alike—Diablo vast and black and fierce, and Hal Dunbar dark and huge and terrible of eye, also; which was proof enough that Bull Hunter was a good deal of a child. He cared less about the world as it was than for the world as it might be, and as long as life gave him something to dream about, he did not care in the least about the facts of existence.

Another man would have been worried about the future; but Bull Hunter went down the road with his swinging stride, perfectly at peace with himself and with life. He had not enough money in his pocket to buy a meal, but he was not thinking so far ahead.

It was still well before noon when he came in sight of the Bridewell place. It varied not a whit from the typical ranch of that region, a low-built collection of sheds and arms sprawling around the ranch house itself. About the building was a far-flung network of corrals. Bull Hunter found his way among them and followed a sound of hammering. He was well among the sheds when a great black stallion shot into view around a nearby corner, tossing his head and mane. He was pursued by a shrill voice crying, “Diablo! Hey! You old fool! Stand still…it’s me…it’s Tod!”

To the amazement of Bull Hunter, Diablo the Terrible, Diablo the man-killer, paused and reluctantly turned about, shaking his head as though he did not wish to obey but was compelled by the force of conscience. At once a bare-legged boy of ten came in sight, running and shaking his fist angrily at the giant horse. Indeed, it was a tremendous animal. Not the seventeen hands that the hotel proprietor had described to Bull, but a full sixteen three, and so proudly high-headed, so stout-muscled of body, so magnificently long and tapering of leg, that a wiser horseman than the hotelkeeper might have put Diablo down for more than seventeen hands.

Most tall horses are like tall men—they are freakish and malformed in some of their members; but Diablo was as trim as a pony. He had the high withers, the mightily sloped shoulders, and the short back of a weight carrier. And although at first glance his underpinning seemed too frail to bear the great mass of his weight or withstand the effort of his driving power of shoulders and deep, broad thighs, yet a closer reckoning made one aware of the comfortable dimensions of the cannon bone with all that this feature portended. Diablo carried his bulk with the grace which comes of compacted power well in hand.

Not that Bull Hunter analyzed the stallion in any such fashion. He was, literally, ignorant of horseflesh. But in spite of his ignorance the long neck, not overfleshed, suggested length of stride and the mighty girth meant wind beyond exhaustion and told of the great heart within. The points of an ordinary animal may be overlooked, but a great horse speaks for himself in every language and to every man. He was coal-black, this Diablo, except for the white stocking of his off forefoot; he was night-black, and so silken sleek that, as he turned and pranced, flashes of light glimmered from shoulders to flanks.

Bull Hunter stared in amazement that changed to appreciation, and appreciation that burst in one overpowering instant to the full understanding of the beauty of the horse. Joy entered the heart of the big man. He had looked on horses hitherto as pretty pictures perhaps, but useless to him. Here was an animal that could bear him like the wind wherever he would go. Here was a horse who could gallop tirelessly under him all day and labor through the mountains, bearing him as lightly as the cattle ponies bore ordinary men. The cumbersome feeling of his own bulk, which usually weighed heavily on Bull, disappeared. He felt light of heart and light of limb.

In the meantime the bare-legged boy had come to the side of the big horse, still shrilling his anger. He stood under the lofty head of the stallion and shook his small fist into the face of Diablo the Terrible. And while Bull, quaking, expected to see the head torn from the shoulders of the child, Diablo pointed his ears and sniffed the fist of the boy inquisitively.

In fact, this could not be the horse of which the hotelkeeper had told him, or perhaps he had been recently tamed and broken?

That, for some reason, made the heart of Bull Hunter sink.

The boy now reached up and twisted his fingers into the mane of the black.

“Come along now. And if you pull away ag’in, you old fool, Diablo, I’ll give you a thumping, I tell you. Git along!”

Diablo meekly lowered his head and made his step mincing to regulate his gait to that of his tiny master. He was brought alongside a rail fence. There he waited patiently while the boy climbed up to the top rail and then slid onto his back. Again Bull Hunter caught his breath. He expected to see the stallion leap into the air and snap the child high above his head with a single arching of his back, but there was no such violent reaction. Diablo, indeed, turned his head with his ears flattened and bared his teeth, but it was only to snort at the knee of the boy. Plainly he was bluffing, if horses ever bluffed. The boy carelessly dug his brown toes into the cheek of the great horse and shoved his head about.

“Giddap,” he called. “Git along, Diablo!”

Diablo walked gently forward.

“Hurry up! I ain’t got all day!” And the boy thumped the giant with his bare heels.

Diablo broke into a trot as soft, as smooth flowing, as water passing over a smooth bed of sand. Bull ran to the corner of the shed and gaped after them until the pair slid around a corner and were gone. Instinctively he drew off his hat and gaped.

He was startled back to himself by loud laughter nearby, and, looking up, he saw an old fellow in overalls with a handful of nails and a hammer. He stood among a scattering of uprights which represented, apparently, the beginnings of the skeleton of a barn. Now he leaned against one of these uprights and indulged his mirth. Bull regarded him mildly; he was used to being laughed at.

CHAPTER 14

“That’s the way they all do,” said the old man. “They all gape the same fool way when they see Diablo the first time.”

“Is that the wild horse?” asked Bull in his gentle voice. “That’s him. I s’pose after seeing Tod handle him, you’ll want to try to ride him right off?”

Bull looked in the direction in which the horse had disappeared. He swallowed a lump that had risen in his throat and shook his head sadly.

“Nope. You see, I dunno nothing about horses, really.”

The old man regarded him with a new and sudden interest.

“Takes a wise man to call himself a fool,” he declared axiomatically.

Bull took this dubious bit of praise as an invitation and came slowly closer to the other. He had the child’s way of eyeing a stranger with embarrassing steadiness at a first meeting and thereafter paying little attention to the face. He wrote the features down in his memory and kept them at hand for reference, as it were. As he drew nearer, the old man grew distinctly serious, and when Bull was directly before him he gazed up into the face of Bull with distinct amazement. At a distance the big man did not seem so large because of the grace of his proportions; when he was directly confronted, however, he seemed a veritable giant.

“By the Lord, you
are
big. And who might you be, stranger?”

“My name’s Charlie Hunter; though mostly folks call me just plain Bull.”

“That’s queer,” chuckled the other. “Well, glad to know you. I’m Bridewell.”

They shook hands, and Bridewell noted the gentleness of the giant. As a rule strong men are tempted to show their strength when they shake hands; Bridewell appreciated the modesty of Charlie Hunter.

“And you didn’t come to ride Diablo?”

“No. I just stopped in to see him. And—” Bull sighed profoundly.

“I know. He gives even me a touch now and then, though I know what a devil he is!”

“Devil?” repeated Bull, astonished. “Why, he’s as gentle as a kitten!”

“Because you seen Tod ride him?” Bridewell laughed. “That don’t mean nothing. Tod can bully him, sure. But just let a grown man come near him—with a saddle! That’ll change things pretty pronto! You’ll see the finest little bit of boiled-down hell-raising that ever was! The jingle of a pair of spurs is Diablo’s idea of a drum—and he makes his charge right off! Gentle? Huh!” The grunt was expressive. “And what good’s a hoss if he can’t be rode with a saddle?” He waved the subject of Diablo into the distance. “They ain’t any hope unless Hal Dunbar can ride him. If he can’t, I’ll shoot the beast!”

“Shoot him?” echoed Bull Hunter. He took a pace back, and his big, boyish face clouded to a frown. “Not that, I guess!”

“Why not?” asked Bridewell, curious at the change in the big stranger. “Why not? What good is he?”

“Why—he’s good just to look at. I’d keep him just for that.”

“And you can have him just for that—if you can manage to handle him. Want to try?”

Bull shook his head. “I don’t know nothing about horses,” he confessed again. He glanced at the skeleton of standing beams. “Building a barn, eh?”

“You wouldn’t call it pitching hay or shoeing a hoss that I’m doing, I guess,” said the old fellow crossly. “I’m fussing at building a barn, but a fine chance I got. I get all my timber here—look at that!”

He indicated the stacks of beams and lumber around him.

“And then I get some men out of town to work with me on it. But they get lonely. Don’t like working on a ranch. Besides, they had a scrap with me. I wouldn’t have ’em loafing around the job. Rather have no help at all than have a loafer helping me. So they quit. Then I tried to get my cowhands to give me a lift, but they wouldn’t touch a hammer. Specialists in cows is what they say they are, ding bust ’em! So here I am trying to do something and doing nothing. How can I handle a beam that it takes three men to lift?”

He illustrated by going to a stack of long and massive timbers and tugging at the end of one of them. He was able to raise that end only a few inches.

“You see?”

Bull nodded.

“Suppose you give me the job handling the timbers?” he suggested. “I ain’t much good with a hammer and nails, but I might manage the lifting.”

“All by yourself? One man?” he eyed the bulk of Bull hopefully for a moment, then the light faded from his face. “Nope, you couldn’t raise ’em. Not them joists yonder!”

“I think I could,” said Bull.

Old Bridewell thrust out his jaw. He had been a combative man in his youth; and he still had the instinct of a fighter.

“I got ten dollars,” he said, “that says you can’t lift that beam and put her up on end! That one right there, that I tried to lift a minute ago!”

“All right,” Bull nodded.

“You’re on for the bet?” the old man chuckled gayly. “All right. Let’s see you give a heave!”

Bull Hunter obediently stepped to the timber. It was a twelve footer of bulky dimensions, heavy wood not thoroughly seasoned. Yet he did not approach one end of it. He laid his immense hands on the center of it. Old Bridewell chuckled to himself softly as he watched; he was beginning to feel that the big stranger was a little simple-minded. His chuckling ceased when he saw the timber cant over on one edge.

“Look out!” he called, for Bull had slipped his hand under the lifted side. “You’ll get your fingers smashed plumb off that way.”

“I have to get a hold under it, you see,” explained Bull calmly, and so saying his knees sagged a little and when they straightened the timber rose lightly in his hands and was placed on his shoulder.

“Where’d you like to have it?” asked Bull.

Bridewell rubbed his eyes. “Yonder,” he said faintly.

Bull walked to the designated place, the great timber teetering up and down, quivering with the jar of each stride. There he swung one end to the ground and thrust the other up until it was erect.

“Is this the way you want it?” said Bull.

By this time Bridewell had recovered his self-possession to some degree, yet his eyes were wide as he approached.

“Yep. Just let it lean agin’ that corner piece, will you, Hunter?”

Bull obeyed.

“That might make a fellow’s shoulder sort of sore,” he remarked, “if he had to carry those timbers all day.”

“All day?” gasped Bridewell, and then he saw that the giant, indeed, was not even panting from his effort. He was already turning his attention to the pile of timbers.

“Here,” he said, reluctantly drawing out some money. “Here’s your ten.”

But Bull refused it. “Can’t take it,” he explained. “I just made the bet by way of talk. You see, I knew I could lift it; and you didn’t have any real idea about me. Besides, if I’d lost I couldn’t have paid. I haven’t any money.”

He said this so gravely and simply that old Bridewell watched him quizzically, half suspecting that there was a touch of irony hidden somewhere. It gradually dawned on him that a man who was flat broke was refusing money which he had won fairly on a bet. The idea staggered Bridewell. He was within an ace of putting Bull Hunter down as a fool. Something held him back, through some underlying respect for the physical might of the big man and a respect, also, for the honesty which looked out of his eyes. He pocketed the money slowly. He was never averse to saving.