Читать книгу Wild Paradise - Kenneth Taylor Perkins - Страница 10

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Far down beyond the last grazing lands of the Cobb’s Coulee ranches a desert wanderer had encamped for the night. His own stock cayuse was foraging for himself in a barranca of weeds. A white stallion, looming like a marble statue in the full glow of the moon, was tethered to a tree-bole, and not far away the prospector was making a supper of cold beans from a can.

Ali Baba, the Arabian horse, watched his new master.

Whether enemy or friend, this man had treated him in a peculiar way—a way that Ali Baba would not forget.

The stallion had no friends among humankind—save that one little girl who rode him. All others of the circus were afraid of him—even the hostler who curried him down every night.

But here was a tall strange creature with the high-peaked sombrero who was not afraid of him. Ali Baba must have wondered why.

He would show him one of these days that all humankind, excepting that girl, must necessarily fear a giant stallion. They must hold his mouth tightly, and pinch his lips, or he would bite. They must keep away from his back or he would break their legs with his hoofs. They must keep away from his head or he would rear and forestrike and dash out their brains.

But this human being, strange to say, showed no fear. How easy it would be for the horse to pretend friendliness, then turn when he least expected it, and crush him to the earth!

Ali Baba, with nostrils quivering, eyes rolling, ears flattened back, studied this rash, audacious fool for a long time. He feared the man with a new sort of fear: he might be another devil like Vasto, who could inflict a stinging wound from afar off with a long snake-like whizzing weapon in his hand. It would be best to wait for a while and not look for trouble. The man was queer. He was gentle. He did not smell like Vasto. He smelled like a dry keen wind. Ali Baba remembered that smell—half of the desert, half of man—a memory that went back to his yearling days in Arabia.

Half of that scent he loved. Half he hated. Men had come when he was drinking at an oasis and thrown a noose about his neck. Yes, about a neck which had never felt pain except the love-bites of the mother mare, or the warning bites of the father stallion, chasing him from the herd.

This man brought it all back, for the hot desert wind had given him the one touch of fragrance which had sent a numbing current of fear through the wild horse when he was first captured.

And there were other fears that gripped the pampered circus star. They were fears rooted deeply in his first days in the world: fears of every shadow, every sound, every danger lurking in the barrancas, biding their time behind giant boulders, ready to ambush him from the chaparral.

The sound of his own hoofs upon the rocks terrified him. His gilded hoofs were used to the soft-sounding sawdust. But here at every step he struck a sharp ringing note, and sparks flew from under his feet! Bits of dry chaparral, chased by the wind, scudded before him. In the moonlight, and to his untutored sight, they seemed like devils dancing venomously and silently in his path. Gaunt cactus trees loomed with upstretched arms all about him. They were like beings afraid to run, afraid to attack, but waiting, holding their breath until he came close.

He was in a sweat, his silver coat darkened in streaks so that he looked like a pinto. His mane tossed; he shied with such strength when he was being led down those strange trails that he very nearly bowled his captor’s little paint horse off his feet.

But here he was unharmed, tethered to a stump. The paint horse was calmly and stodgily munching at weeds; the man was eating pungent beans.

Ali Baba might have been in a box car munching bran mash. He might have been galloping around and around on an endless sawdust trail with rows of leering, shouting faces about him. The talon-like hands of a ring master would be gripping his soft mouth. Hour by hour, day after day he would gallop slowly around. The hot glare of the big top above and the smell of the hundreds of hated human beings, and of the dreaded caged cats, would be torturing him.

But now this sickening picture dwindled away into vistas of sand billows, of moonlit mountains. He dreamed of desert trees, of an endless horizon, toward which he could gallop unimpeded by man or beast. Warm sand was under his feet—and he remembered the pleasant touch. And he remembered the sound of tinkling water in a dry hot land.

But no, this was more exciting. He sniffed. He tossed his mane. He champed. His ears pricked up. He was still ridden by fear—but it was a peculiar type of fear.

It was the fear that the mariner who loves the sea bears for her power. It was the fear that a lioness bears for her shaggy and majestic mate. It was the fear of a horse for the master that he loves. It was the same fear Ali Baba had felt when a colt, and his mother took him out across a windswept plain of sand and rocks and ravines. It was not after all fear. It was ecstasy. It was the bewildering ecstasy of a saint who is assured of Heaven, meeting the horror of death.

Ali Baba must have had some intimation in that terrifying combination of menacing circumstances—the steep trails, the black shadows, the moonlit desert, the gaunt man—an intimation that he was going to be born again.

He tossed his head, and the prospector looked up at him, enchanted by the sight of the moonbeams glowing in that silvery mane. For the brief moment that spanned that nervous gesture, Dave Huppert had a vision of the horse that Ali Baba might become. A dejected circus horse, with the soul of a mule, by that one proud, ecstatic tossing of his mane and head, had become like Pegasus.

The divine fire of Pegasus coursed through the veins of the big stallion. He wanted to break away and gallop for miles over that moonlit plain, racing his shadow through the crisp air.

He looked over toward the hummock of sand where was lying the stranger who had brought him to this paradise. The man was sleeping, his head upon a saddle, his big boots stretched out in the white sand. He seemed gigantic, but bereft of his usual majesty. He was asleep and powerless.

Ali Baba examined the tree-bole which was his anchor.

Silently and in a deliberate manner, he nosed about the halter which imprisoned him. Now, I have already recorded that one of the many tricks Ali had learned in his circus education, was the trick of yanking and nibbling at a knot until its coils opened up.

He knew that if he pulled at these loops one after another something would happen. Some loops if yanked would tighten the knot and he would have to start his work over again. Another loop could be yanked out free of the knot entirely. If he kept up this pulling and nibbling long enough, he would suddenly find the rope cast off.

For this reason his hostler at the circus always hitched him by means of a snap hook which was beyond the creature’s skill. But in this case the man who had brought him into the desert had—naturally enough—tethered him with the simplest sort of a knot—a half hitch or two.

It was child’s play for Ali Baba. For such is the nature of this particular knot, that no matter how hard you tug at it, it will not bind. The horse nibbled away deliberately and with considerable self assurance, until he found himself free.

He did not spring off down the trail. He was too wise for that. He had the impulsive spirit of his wild desert ancestry in his veins, but at the same time he was a horse brought up in the company of man.

Men were peculiar. They did not watch him, if he stood still. But whenever he shied, they jumped for him. They let him alone if he hung his head; but once he showed any fire they were at his mouth.

He never could understand men. They were cruel and pestiferous. They shouted at him; they made whips crack over his ears; they imprisoned him in box cars that rattled and shrieked over endless stretches of night; they tortured his mouth whenever he reared; they were afraid of him when he champed. They were foolish, and weak, and puny. Yet, something told him that they were wiser than they were foolish, and their puny size was to be feared—as you might fear a small leopard.

Now here was this man lying down just a few yards away. As I say, he had no longer the majesty about him that strikes terror into all animals. He was supine, helpless, with eyes closed, arms inert, and no whip in his hand.

Ali Baba could have leaped into the air and landed with all his terrific weight upon that man’s skull. Thus he would be avenged of all the wrongs mankind had done to him. Thus he would be paid for his years of imprisonment.

The big stallion wandered up toward the hummock of sand.

He watched the man lying there, half expecting that he might awake and hurl out a black cracking snake from his hand. But as he watched, the breeze shifted slightly, and the big horse, being now to the lee of his captor, got that scent again—a scent that he could not understand.

It was a scent unlike any of the circus people. It had no menace in it—as for instance the menace that always clung about the animal keepers who fed the big cats. Rather than a menace it was a scent that evoked the desert of the stallion’s youth. There was the smell of earth and sand and dry wind; there was the scent of a human being purified by fierce suns; there was the suggestion of cactus, of desert flowers.

Then the stallion remembered. This was the man he had followed into paradise. It was a man he loved. It was a wise and crafty man. One that had never harmed him. One that had brought him to this desert spring in the moonlight to drink.

The big horse swung off, his gilded hoofs making scarcely a sound on the soft sand, his huge white form moving into the light of the open plain, then galloping away, silent, ghostly, like Pegasus trailing over the cloud-like sand dunes.

The dawn had not yet come when Ali Baba, racing gloriously along the outskirts of the desert, was halted at a lonely rancho by a peculiarly thrilling sound.

A mare had seen him and had whinnied.

He came up to the corral of the little desert outfit his neck arched, his gilded hoofs lifted high, his mane waving. It is safe to say that he made the most wondrous picture of symmetry and grace that that little claybank mare had ever seen or dreamed of.

Ali Baba reached across the corral fence, his sleek silvery neck glistening in the light of the low moon.

The claybank was afraid when he came so close. She had run to the fence to meet him, but then seeing the light shine upon him, she wheeled about and scampered off. He followed the stake-and-rider fence to the other end of the corral.

She waited. Her head stretched out, her nostrils dilated, snorting, her muscles quivering with excitement and fear. Again she scampered off, but then wheeled, looked at him, lifted her head, sniffed at the breeze. Yes, he was the most glorious sight in all of creation. There he was prancing up and down in the moonlight.

The moon was waning, the sky in the east made a pale vermilion background to this superb suitor. She watched him, then meandered slowly, hesitantly up toward him. Their faces touched. He nudged her shoulder with a gentle toss of his head. Again fear overtook her, she turned, as if a rider had yanked her mouth, wheeling her about.

But this time the princely steed was not satisfied to prance up and down that crooked pesky fence. With scarcely any run to give him momentum, he leaped into the air, kicked up his gilded heels—the gilt had worn off now because of the sand but they still had enough speckled yellow to twinkle as he took the jump. As easy as a rocking horse lilting back and forth, he was over the fence.

They raced around the corral. They nudged each other, they nibbled at each other’s throats and necks and backs. She fled and the white steed galloped after her. She was caught; they played at fighting; they chased and galloped again. Then when the great white steed seemed to have assured himself that she would follow him to the ends of the earth, he took the leap again and was out of the corral.

She stood baffled, quivering, neighing to him. What sort of a trick was this? Was it so easy to find freedom? Merely a little run, an upward leap, a twinkling of hind feet in the air, and there was the whole desert for you to race in!

She paced around, whinnying, fretting like a caged animal. She fretted herself into a lather. She whistled to him to come back. She made such a rumpus, that some one in the main ranch house heard her and a window threw out a band of yellow light into the corral.

This was enough to urge her on. Day was coming and hard work. She was no stock horse. She was cut out for the desert trails. She galloped toward the fence, and then, losing confidence wheeled off to the flank, instead of taking the jump.

The stallion was furious. He neighed, and tossed his mane. As gracefully as a bit of tumbleweed blowing over a bowlder, he sailed into the corral again.

He chased the mare up against the fence—this time with no pretence of gentleness, biting her shoulder, shoving her before him. She understood easily enough. But at the fence she balked.

He took the jump this time—as if to show her how easy it was. She was not standing still, dumbfounded the way she had stood before. She was racing along with him. Somehow or other the miracle had happened. She was free, galloping along at breakneck speed over the sage plain.

Behind, a voice was calling to her. She recognized it. But she would not heed it. It was not the voice of her master. It was only the voice of a human being!

Dave Huppert awoke the next morning with the sun slanting its hot rays directly into his eyes. The heat of the light was one thing that awoke him. Another was the sound of horses’ hoofs in the pebbles of the waterpocket. He looked up with a start. There was the tree-bole in front of him, but the white stallion was gone.

The next instant, jumping to his feet, he saw what had happened, or what he thought had happened. Ali Baba was down there heaving his sides with long, loud, soul-satisfying swigs.

He had freed himself from his tree-bole, but that explained only a part of what had happened. His sides were lathered, his tail and mane tangled with thorn. Evidently he had gone on a good long spree. And besides this, there was a claybank mare with her muzzle thrust into the water. The mare was fatigued, her hide shaggy and wet.

Dave Huppert went down to the pool to examine this new addition to his outfit. She was not a wild horse, although her recent journey from the outskirts of civilization down into the desert gave her an unkempt and rangy appearance. Dave knew she was not wild, for she permitted him to approach.

Besides this, he saw the brand on her thigh: the brand of the Box Deuce. He did not know where the Box Deuce ranch was. If he had it would have been wise—despite the loss of valuable time—to take the mare back and explain this little familiarity which his stallion had indulged in.

Dave looked up at the stallion. “So that’s what you’ve been up to! You old villain!”

The stallion answered with a huge belly-expanding sigh. He seemed to be glad to get back. The desert—much as he loved it—was a rough country. Much rougher than the soft sawdust rings he was used to.

The approach of the strange human being with the wilderness scent about his clothes, did not seem to disconcert the big horse. He had made up his mind that the man was all right. He was the master; he was the benefactor. He was the one to thank for this new and glorious life. He was the one who knew where water was; and where the loneliest trails were. He was the one who knew where Arabia was. He must be followed.

Dave examined the halter, and came to the opinion that the big fellow had torn himself free from the tree-bole—taking part of the wood with him. In his galloping through the thorn and mesquite the wood had come free from the halter.

But the halter, strange to relate, had no knots left in it. There was, of course, the chance that the loose knots had worked out in the thick mesquite. Mesquite is tricky enough to pull the knots out of a fishing net.

“Tonight, old fellow,” Dave laughed, “I’ll tie a new kind of knot.” He hitched the horse to a sycamore stump, then turned to the mare and shooed her away.

“You get a-going, old girl,” he said. “I don’t want any of the Box Deuce herders on my trail!”

She went trotting down the cañon. But anticipating that she was liable to change her mind, Dave followed her. He chased her up the cañon sides racing alongside, giving her flanks a wallop now and then with the bight of his reins. Reaching the top of the cañon wall, where there was a divide across which lay another valley leading northward, he gave her another lash and sent her galloping terror-stricken on her homeward trail.

He then returned to his camp ground and packing up his outfit, saddled his own bronc, hitched the stallion’s halter to his pommel as before, and hit the trail.

When he found himself again jogging along the desert trail, a sense of mingled freedom and security came over him. He had picked his way carefully—choosing the beds of gypsum and the bowlder washes of the cañons where his own pony and the big stallion could leave no tracks. In a word Dave had given the world the slip—so he thought—and it would be hard to tell who felt the freer down there with the Coyotero mesas and cañons stretching southward before them—the stallion or the man.

He rode on, singing blithely. In his mind’s eye was the picture of a girl with golden hair and flashing white arms and a glorious smile. He had an engagement, according to the boss hostler of Vasto’s Circus, to meet that girl a month hence in Tucson. Until then it was his duty to keep the white horse and restore the spirit which the circus life had destroyed. A very pleasant future—as far as Dave could foretell.

It was while dreaming these roseate dreams that Dave Huppert was rudely awakened by an occurrence which he might have easily foreseen. The mare was not to be cast off. She had elected a new master—the stallion—and there she was picking her way down the same zigzag trail in pursuit!

Dave, for all his love of horses, could have shot her without compunction. But instead, he relieved his feelings by kicking his heels into the flanks of his mount. Both the little bronc and the white stallion broke into a gallop.

What good this would do, Dave himself could not have explained. He knew perfectly well that the faster he covered trail, the faster the mare would follow. And it was certainly no earthly use trying to elude her.

She caught up presently, as friendly and unwelcome as a lost cat.

But this must be stopped. That mare was a branded mare. It would be disagreeable to be caught leading her into the heart of the Coyotero desert where for many years bandits had hidden their rustled stock. He would have to give an account of this theft, if they ever found him. And the only account any horse thief was ever asked to give of himself down there in the Coyotero was a tight-rope act.

He thought of ways to dispose of the pest. He could not lose her in the arroyos. She was too much in love with the magnificent Ali Baba for that! He had already proved the futility of this course.

He could shoot her. But this was abhorrent, as well as unwise. She was a pretty little claybank. And she was a good humored critter, too. All the world loves a lover; and most surely all the world would love a poor little Arizona cayuse who had completely lost her heart to a circus star!

No, he would not shoot her. He did not even reflect how unwise this would be. He wouldn’t shoot her anyway.

And this was lucky for him. They did find her tracks—along with the tracks of the stallion, and Dave’s own bronc. If they had found her dead on the trail, they would have held him to account for it.

There was one other possibility: Why not tether her to some piñon or sycamore tree down there in a bowlder wash?

This possibility appealed to him far less than any other. For he had no intention whatever of leaving a good natured, lovelorn cayuse like that to broil in one of those hot cañons, to starve, to be tortured with thirst, or attacked by desert lobos.

Thus it was that Dave Huppert decided to jog along into the heart of the desert. True enough they had a clew to his trail now. Dave had covered his tracks, choosing silt and lava beds and bowlder washes where his mount left no hoofprints. But the stallion had run free that night. He would not choose lava or rocks. He would choose sand where he could be tracked! It was up to Dave now to give the world the slip again.

He would take more care than ever in choosing his ground. He would speed up, traveling in the early morning and late afternoon; resting at night without a fire; covering as much trail as he could by moonlight.

He cut out on a sage plain and headed for the sierra on the horizon called Sundown Mesa. The stallion loped along with him in high spirits. And close behind jogged the little claybank.