THE CHALLENGE OF THE BRUTE

There had been yellow, mellow weather for weeks on weeks, but this day dawned hard and cold. Some projected rancor of the winter was in the air. Westward the peaks were blanketed with thick gray clouds, while eastward a sullen redness showed where the sun strove to rise on an angry world. The wind was the kind that sc.r.a.pes raw the nerves, buffeting man and beast with cross-currents and unexpected blasts, howling and shrieking around chimneys and gables, covering everything with dust and sand.

Haig awoke to hear the wind tearing at the shutters and the roof, the pines on the hillside thundering like surf, the hills reverberating with the maddest trumpetings. He lay a moment listening; his pulse quickened, at the sound of all that tumult; and he leaped from his bed calling loudly for Slim Jim. It was a day for battle. The very elements were up and at it, as if all nature had enlisted in the struggle between man and brute.

For all his eagerness, he ate his breakfast leisurely, resolved to make no such error as he had made before. There should be no mad haste and no anger; no working on an empty stomach, on nerves drawn taut.

Bacon and eggs and buckwheat cakes, with coffee and a single pipe, occupied an hour or more; and then, feeling fit for anything, he set out for the corrals.

He did not scruple this time to take every precaution known to the experts of the corrals. Bill was mounted on the wisest horse in the stables, with a lariat ready against the event of Sunnysides trying the fence again. Then Haig directed Farrish, Curly, and Pete to rope and saddle the outlaw, saving himself for the supreme struggle. But to their astonishment there was none of the difficulties in the preliminaries that they encountered on the previous occasion; only two or three vicious movements, no more.

"Foxy, ain't you?" said Farrish to the outlaw, when the saddle was on.

"Savin' yourself, are you, you yellow devil?"

The horse was led as before into the larger corral. He stepped nimbly, obediently, as if resistance were the farthest thing from his thoughts, even when Haig, his arch-enemy, walked up to him, grasped the bridle, and looked steadily into his eyes. For a moment all stood still, as the challenge pa.s.sed between man and brute. Then Haig tested the cinches of the saddle, looked carefully around him, and disposed the men with a final word to each.

"Now then! Off with it!"

Farrish removed the last rope, and then only the bridle rein in Haig's hand, and the fence yonder, stoutly repaired since the last battle, remained between Sunnysides and the sandhills of the San Luis. True, only a fence and a guard had held him all these weeks of his captivity, but that fence had been built up, on his arrival, two planks higher than the one in which he now found himself again, and from which he had all but escaped at the first opportunity.

Haig put his feet cautiously into the stirrup, and sprang into the saddle. He was prepared for a repet.i.tion of the trick that had almost cost him his life, and ready to swing himself out of the saddle if Sunnysides should go over backward again. But the horse was indeed "foxy"; one would have said that he knew his man, and would waste no time or energy on manoeuvers that his enemy had discounted. For some seconds he stood quite motionless, while Haig settled firmly in his seat, and gripped the bridle rein expectantly. At length the horse lifted and turned his head, and looked, as it appeared, toward the western mountains, half hidden in the gray swirl of clouds.

"Yes, over there's the San Luis," muttered Haig. "But it's a long way, and you're not going."

Farrish grinned. But Pete stood like a wooden Indian, so still and intent was he, with his black eyes fixed on the outlaw. Curly loosened the coils of the lariat in his hands. In a corner of the corral Bill, mounted and watchful, held his rope ready for a throw.

Still Sunnysides did not move. But his tail swished with the slow and menacing movement of a tiger's, and there was just a quiver of muscles under his golden hide.

"Watch out!" called Pete.

And then it came. The horse bounded into the air, and came down stiff-legged, with a jolt that Haig felt in every bone. Then he leaped sideways half a dozen feet, and Haig was flung far over, hanging perilously in the saddle. With almost one motion the horse was in the air again, to come down with the same frightful, jarring shock.

Instantly thereupon he lunged forward, stopped short, ducked his head, and narrowly missed hurling Haig like a stone from a catapult.

All these tactics were repeated with variations; and then, of a sudden, as if he thought Haig had forgotten his experience by this time, he reared, and with the same lightning swiftness as before, went over backward on the ground. But Haig was too quick for him. He swung himself to one side, released his right foot from the stirrup, and rolled away from beneath the horse as they came down with a crash. At the same instant Pete and Curly rushed in, and the horse leaped to his feet only to be brought down again with two ropes on his legs.

Haig, dusty but uninjured, was on his feet in a jiffy, and leaning over the thwarted outlaw.

"You didn't really think you could do it again, did you?" he said.

"But he's a h.e.l.lyun, though, ain't he!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Curly, bracing himself on his rope.

The horse was allowed to rise; Haig climbed cautiously into the saddle once more; and the same tense silence as the first ensued, while Sunnysides waited, as if for inspiration.

Then it was on as before, but with accentuated fury. The horse, for his opening demonstration, bucked with his back curved like a steel bow. Haig was almost propelled into the air, but hung on desperately; and as the outlaw came down on stiffened legs Haig jabbed the spurs viciously into his flanks. For Sunnysides had been too calculating in his measures; it was desirable to stir him up, to anger him, to torment him until he should wear himself out with his furious struggles.

The spurs did it. In an instant Sunnysides was a demon. All that he had done was like the antics of a colt compared with what followed. No eye in the corral could follow and record all his movements. He was in every part of the enclosure at once, it seemed. There were instants, too, when he appeared to have disa.s.sociated himself from the earth, and to have taken to the air as his element. And then the earth rang again with the clatter of his hoofs; his four legs became a hundred, and then were four again, pounding like piledrivers, like steel drills. He flung himself against the fence until it swayed and creaked, and Haig's legs were bruised by the violent contact. Clouds of dust rose and hung above the enclosure, and settled on the outlaw's wet shoulders, on Haig's sweating face, in his eyes and nostrils, and in his throat until he was fairly choking. But though half-blinded, dizzy, and aching in all his body, Haig hung on, and dug the spurs ceaselessly into the horse's flanks.

"G.o.d! He's got him!" cried Farrish.

"Your game's up!" yelled Curly tauntingly, dancing with joy in his corner of the corral.

But the game was not up. Curly's words were barely out of his mouth when something went wrong with Haig. Just what happened none could be quite sure of, then or afterward; but in the midst of Sunnysides'

plungings, there came a windmill kind of movement, rather like the whirling of a dervish, out of which the horse lunged swiftly forward, and halted violently, with his head down, and his forelegs stiff before him. It was apparently an elaboration of one of the commonest tricks of all; and if Haig could have stuck to the saddle then he probably would have won. But he was thrown. He went sprawling over the horse's lowered head, and struck the ground on his head and shoulders, and lay still.

What followed was more marvelous even than the unseating of Haig with the shout of victory already rising to his lips. There came a snort that ended in a scream; and then a flash of yellow through the dust. Bill Craven, on his horse at one side of the corral, saw it coming straight toward him, and tried to whirl his noose. Too late.

The outlaw was upon him; his own pony, rearing, was caught unbalanced; and Bill himself instinctively leaned backward in the saddle.

There was a terrific impact; the pony was struck squarely on the left fore-quarter; and horse and rider went down together in a heap against the fence. Then over them went the outlaw, trampling them as he leaped and clambered, taking the top plank with him as he landed outside the corral on his head and knees. In an instant he was up; in another, or the same instant, he was off, with his head down, and belly to earth, with the speed of a race-horse and the frenzy of a wild thing set free.

Haig was only slightly stunned by the fall. He heard, though he did not see, the escape of Sunnysides; and for one black moment all in the present was blotted out. But that was only the dizziness, and the reeling pain in his head; and there was the sky filled with gray-black, contending clouds; and Pete was leaning over him.

"Hurt?" asked the Indian.

"No."

He reached up one hand, and Pete helped him to his feet. Swaying a little, he looked around the corral. Farrish was on the outside, gazing down the road where Sunnysides was now almost out of sight, a mere yellow spot in a cloud of dust. Curly was jerking Craven's horse to its feet.

"What's the matter there?" called Haig.

"Bill's hurt!" answered Curly.

With Pete at his side, not yet a.s.sured that all was well with him, Haig walked unsteadily to where Bill lay against the fence.

"What is it, Craven?" he asked.

"Leg broke. My horse fell on me," Bill answered weakly. He had, besides, a gash in the left side of his head, from which the blood flowed down his face.

"Into the barn with him!" Haig ordered quietly.

They placed him on a cot, and Pete gave him a long pull at his ever-ready flask.

"I'm sorry, Bill!" said Haig, looking down at him.

"It's my own fault," replied Craven. "An' it serves me d.a.m.ned right for lettin' him get by me."

Haig smiled grimly, then turned to the other men with orders. He was ominously quiet; even the dullest of them, the slow-witted Curly, saw and wondered at the unusual calm that showed on his face and in his accents.

"Now then, business!" he said, with swift decision. "You'll take the sorrels, Curly, and drive to Tellurium for the doctor. Don't be afraid to drive them; I'll not be on your back for that. Pete, go to the cottage, and bring my gun. Jim knows where it is. Farrish--where's Farrish?"

"Here!"

He came leading two ponies from their stalls.

"What are you doing, Farrish?"

"I supposed we'd better find out where he's gone, and see if--"

"There's no doubt where he's headed for, is there?" Haig interrupted.

"And who's going to stop him? No, saddle Trixy!"