Rebel Spurs
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Andre Norton >> Rebel Spurs
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Some of the noise died. _Don_ Lorenzo pointed a pistol skyward. Drew
strove to make his body one with Shiloh's small easy movements. The big
gray knew very well what was in progress, was tensing now for a swift
getaway leap. And he made it on the crack of the gun.
But if Shiloh had easily outdistanced all opposition before on those
improvised tracks, he was now meeting a far more equal race. The gray
colt's stride was effortless, he was pounding out with power--more than
Drew had ever known him to exert. Yet those golden legs matched his pace,
reach for reach, hoofbeat for hoofbeat.
"Come on, boy!" Drew's urging was lost in the wild shouting of the
spectators. Some who were mounted were trying to parallel the runners. But
Shiloh responded to his rider's encouragement even if he could not hear or
understand. Drew would never use quirt or spur on the stud. What Shiloh
had to give must come willingly and because he delighted in the giving.
They swept in and around the shade of the tree, made the arc to return.
That golden head with its tossing crown of black forelock; it _was_
slipping back! Oro was no longer nose to nose with Shiloh, rather now nose
to neck. Drew could hear Rivas' voice encouraging, pleading....
A mass of men, mounted and on foot, funneled the runners down to where the
line of rope lay straight to mark the finish. Oro was creeping up once
more, inch by hard-won inch.
Drew's head went up, his throat was rasped raw by the Yell which had taken
desperate gray-coated troopers down hedge-bordered roads in Kentucky and
steep ravines in Tennessee, sending them, if need be, straight into the
mouths of Yankee field guns. And the Yell brought Shiloh home, only a nose
ahead of his rival--as if he had been spurred by the now outlawed war cry.
Then Drew found he had his hands full trying to pull up the colt and
persuade him that the race was indeed over.
5
A black mule came up beside Drew as he slowly pulled Shiloh down to a
canter. Fenner, a wide grin splitting his beard, bellowed:
"That shore was a race! Need any help, son?"
Drew shook his head, wanting to bring Shiloh under full control at a rate
which would quiet the colt before they headed back to the furor about the
finish line. And only now did he have time to relish his own excited pride
and pleasure.
Since he had first seen Shiloh on that scouting trip back to Kentucky in
'64, he had known he must someday own the gray colt. He had lain out in
the brush for a long time that morning to watch the head groom of Red
Springs put the horse through his paces in the training paddock. And
watching jealously, Drew had realized that Shiloh was one of those mounts
that a man discovers only once in his life-time, though he may breed and
love their kind all his years.
Drew would have been content with Shiloh as a mount and a companion, but
now he was sure that the colt was more, so much more. This gray was going
to be one of the Great Ones, a racer and a sire--to leave his mark in horse
history and stamp his own quality on foals throughout miles and years in
this southwestern land. Drew licked the grit of dust from his lips, filled
his lungs with a deep breath as Shiloh turned under rein pressure.
It was a long time before the Kentuckian was able to separate Shiloh from
his ring of new admirers and bring him back to the stable. Drew refused
several offers for the colt, some of them so fantastic he could only
believe their makers sun-touched or completely carried away by the
excitement of the race.
But when he found _Don_ Cazar waiting for him at Kells', he guessed that
this was serious.
"You do not wish to sell him, I suppose?" Hunt Rennie smiled at Drew's
prompt shake of head. "No, that would be too much to hope for, you are not
a fool. But I have something else to suggest. Reese Topham tells me you
are looking for work, preferably with horses. Well, I have a contract to
gentle some remounts for the army, and I need some experienced men to help
break them--"
Drew could not understand the sudden pinch of--could it be alarm? Here it
was: a chance to work on the Range, to know Hunt Rennie, and learn whether
_Don_ Cazar was to remain a legend or become a father. But now he was not
sure.
"I'm no breaker, suh. I've gentled, yes--but eastern style."
"Breaking horses can be brutal, though we don't ride with red spurs on the
Range. Suppose we try some of the eastern methods and see how they work on
our wild ones. Do you think you can do it?"
"A man can't tell what he can do until he tries." Drew still hedged.
There was a trace of frown now between Rennie's brows. "You told Topham
you wanted work." His tone implied that he found Drew's present hesitancy
odd. And--from _Don_ Cazar's point of view--it was. Tubacca was still in a
slump; the rest of the valley held about as many jobs for a man as Drew
had fingers on one hand. The Range was the big holding, and to ride there
meant security and an established position in the community. Also, perhaps
it was not an offer lightly made to an unknown newcomer.
"I can't promise you blue-grass training, suh. That has to begin with a
foal." He hoped Rennie would credit his wavering to a modest appraisal of
his own qualifications.
"Blue-grass training?"
As his father repeated the expression Drew realized the slip of tongue he
had made. And if he took the job, there might be other slips, perhaps far
more serious ones. But to refuse, after Topham had spoken for him ... he
was caught in a pinch with cause for suspicion closing in on either side.
"I was in Kentucky for about a year after the war. I went to stay with a
friend--"
"But you _are_ from Texas?"
Was Rennie watching him too intently? No, he must ride a tighter rein on
his imagination. There was no reason in the wide world why _Don_ Cazar
should expect him to be anyone except Drew Kirby.
"Yes, suh. Didn't have anythin' to go back to there. Thought I'd try for a
new start out here." There was the story of several thousand veterans.
Rennie should have heard it a good many times already.
"Well, come and try some blue-grass training on our colts. And should you
let this stud of yours run with a picked _manada_ of mares, I could
promise good fees."
"Suppose I said yes if the fees were some of the foals--of my own choosing,
suh?" Drew asked.
Rennie ran a finger across the brand which scarred the gray's hide. "Spur
R--that's a new one to me."
"My own. Heard tell as how there's a custom of the country that a slick
this old can be branded and claimed by anyone bringing him in. I wasn't
going to lose him that way should he do any straying, accidental or
intentional."
_Don_ Cazar laughed. "That's using your head, Kirby. All right. It's a
deal as far as I'm concerned. You draw wrangler's pay and take stud fees
in foals--say one in three, your choosing. Register that brand of yours
with _Don_ Lorenzo to be on the safe side. Then you're welcome to run Spur
R with the Double R on the Range."
He held out his hand, and Drew grasped it for a quick shake to seal their
agreement. He was committed now--to the Range and to a small partnership
with its master. But he still wondered if he had made the right choice.
Two days later he dropped bedroll and saddlebags on the spare bunk at one
end of the long adobe-walled room and studied his surroundings with deep
curiosity. It was a fort, all right, this whole stronghold of Rennie's--not
just the bunkhouse which formed part of a side wall. Bunkhouse, feed
store, and storage room, blacksmith shop, cookhouse, stables, main house,
the quarters for the married men and their families--all arranged to
enclose a patio into which choice stock could be herded at the time of an
attack, with a curbed well in the center.
The roofs of all the buildings were flat, with loopholed parapets to be
manned at need. A sentry post on the main house was occupied twenty-four
hours a day by relays of Pimas. A loaded rifle leaned at every window
opening, ready to be fired through loopholes in the wooden war shutters.
The walls were twenty-five inches thick, and mounted on the roof of the
stable, facing the hills from which Apache attacks usually came, was a
small brass cannon--_Don_ Cazar's legacy from troops marching away in '61.
What he saw of the resources of this private fort led Drew to accept the
other stories he had heard of the Range, like the one that _Don_ Cazar's
men practiced firing blindfolded at noise targets to be prepared for night
raids. The place was self-contained and almost self-supporting, with
stores of food, good water, its own forge and leather shop, its own
craftsmen and experts. No wonder the Apaches had given up trying to break
this Anglo outpost and Rennie had accomplished what others found
impossible. He had held his land secure against the worst and most
unbeatable enemy this country had nourished.
There were other Range forts, smaller, but as stoutly and ingeniously
designed, each built beside a water source on Rennie land--defense points
for _Don_ Cazar's riders, their garrisons rotated at monthly intervals.
And Drew had to thank that system for having taken Johnny Shannon away
from the Stronghold before the Kentuckian arrived. Rennie's foster son was
now riding inspection between one water-hole fortification and another.
But Drew was uncertain just how he would rub along with Shannon in the
future.
"_Senor_ Kirby, _Don_ Cazar--he would speak with you in the Casa Grande,"
Leon Rivas called through one of the patio side windows.
"Coming." Drew left the huddle of his possessions on the bunk.
The Casa Grande of the Stronghold was a high-ceilinged, five-room building
about sixty feet long, the kitchen making a right angle to the other rooms
and joining the smoke house to form part of another wall for the patio.
Mesquite logs, adze-hewn and only partially smoothed, were placed over the
doorways, and the plank doors themselves were slung on hand-wrought iron
hinges or on leather straps, from oak turning-posts. Drew knocked on the
age-darkened surface of the big door.
"Kirby? Come in."
Here in contrast to the brilliant sunlight of the patio was a dusky
coolness. There were no glass panes in the windows. Manta, the unbleached
muslin which served to cover such openings in the frontier ranches, was
tacked taut, allowing in air but only subdued light. The walls had been
smoothly plastered, and as in Topham's office, lengths of colorful woven
materials and a couple of Navajo blankets served as hangings. Rugs of
cougar and wolf skin were scattered on the beaten earth of the floor.
There was a tall carved cupboard with a grilled door, a bookcase, and two
massive chests shoved back against the walls. And over the stone mantel of
the fireplace hung a picture of a morose-looking, bearded man wearing a
steel breastplate, the canvas dim and dark with age and smoke.
_Don_ Cazar was seated at a table as massive as the chests, a pile of
papers before him flanked by two four-branch candelabra of native silver.
Bartolome Rivas' more substantial bulk weighed down the rawhide seat of
another chair more to one side.
"Sit down--" Rennie nodded to the seat in front of the table. "Smoke?" He
pushed forward a silver box holding the long cigarillos of the border
country. Drew shook his head.
"Whisky? Wine?" He gestured to a tray with waiting glasses.
"Sherry." Drew automatically answered without thought.
"What do you think of the stock you saw down in the corral?" _Don_ Cazar
poured a honey-colored liquid from the decanter into a small glass.
As the Kentuckian raised it to sip, the scent of the wine quirked time for
him, making this for a fleeting moment the dining room at Red Springs
during a customary after-dinner gathering of the men of the household. The
talk there, too, had been of horses--always horses. Then Drew came back in
a twitch of eyelid to the here and now, to Hunt Rennie watching him with a
measuring he did not relish, to Bartolome's round face with its
close-to-hostile expression. Deliberately Drew sipped again before
answering the question.
"I'd say, suh, if they're but a sample of Range stock, the breed is
excellent. However----"
"However what, _senor_?" Bartolome's eyes challenged Drew. "In this
territory, even in Sonora, there are none to compare with the horses of
this hacienda."
"That is not what I was about to say, _Senor_ Rivas. But if _Don_ Cazar
wishes to try the eastern methods of training, these horses are too old.
You begin with a yearling colt, not three-year-olds."
"To break a foal! What madness!" Now Bartolome's face expressed shock.
"Not breaking," Drew corrected, "training. It is another method
altogether. One puts a weanling on a rope halter, accustoms him to the
feel of the hackamore, of being with men. Then he grows older knowing no
fear or strangeness."
The Mexican looked from Drew to _Don_ Cazar, his shock fading to
puzzlement. Rennie nodded.
"_Si, amigo_, so it is done--in Kentucky and Virginia. But this time we
must deal with the older ones. Can you modify those methods, gentle
without breaking? A colt with the fire still in him, but saddle-broke, is
worth much more--"
"I can try. But you have already said, suh, that you don't allow rough
breakin' here." Drew's half suspicion crystallized into belief. _Don_
Cazar had not really wanted another wrangler at all; he had wanted
Shiloh--and his foals. Well, perhaps he would find he did have a wrangler
who could deliver the goods into the bargain.
"No, but it is always well to learn new ways. I have been in Kentucky,
Kirby. Perhaps some of their methods would not work on the Range. On the
other hand, others might. As you have said--we can but try." He picked up
the top sheet of paper and began to read:
"_Bayos-blancos_--light duns--two. _Bayos-azafranados_--saffrons--one.
_Bayos-narajados_--orange duns--none----"
"There was one," Bartolome interrupted. "The mare, she was lost at Canon
del Palomas."
Rennie frowned, "_Si_, the mare. _Bayos-tigres_--striped ones --three.
_Bayos-cebrunos_--smoked duns--two. _Grullas_--blues--four. Roans--six.
Blacks--three. Bays--four. Twenty-five three-year-olds. You won't be
expected to take on the whole _remuda_, Kirby. Select any six of your own
choosing and use your methods of gentling on them. We'll make a test this
way."
Bartolome uttered a sound closer to a snort than anything else. And Drew
guessed how he stood with the Mexican foreman. Rennie might have faith, or
pretend to have faith, in some new method of training, but Rivas was a
conservative who preferred the tried and true and undoubtedly considered
the Kentuckian an interloper.
"Now, the matter of Shiloh..."
Drew finished the sherry with appreciation. He was beginning to see the
amusing side of this conference. Drew's work on the Range settled, Rennie
was about to get to what he really wanted. But _Don_ Cazar's first words
were a little startling.
"We'll keep him close-in the water corral. To turn a stud of eastern
breeding loose is dangerous----"
"You mean he might be stolen, suh?" Drew clicked his empty glass down on
the table.
"No, he might be killed!" And Rennie's tone indicated he meant just that.
"How...why?"
"There are wild-horse bands out there, though we're trying to capture or
run them off the Range. And a wild stud will always try to add mares to
his band. Because he has fought many times to keep or take mares, he is a
formidable and vicious opponent, one that an imported, tamed stud can
rarely best. Right now, coming into Big Rock well for water is a pinto
that has killed three other stallions--including a black I imported back in
'60--and two of them were larger, heavier animals than he.
"The Trinfans are moving down into that section this week. I hope they can
break up that band, run down the stud anyway. He has courage and cunning,
but his blood is not a line we want for foals on this range. So Shiloh
stays here at the Stronghold; don't risk him loose."
"Yes, suh. What about these wild ones--they worth huntin'?"
"They're mixed; some are scrubs, inbred, poor stuff. But a few fine ones
turn up. Mostly when they do they're strays or bred from strays--escaped
from horse thieves or Indians. If the mustangers here pick up any branded
ones, they're returned to the owners, if possible, or sold at a yearly
auction. By the old Mexican law the hunting season for horses runs from
October to March. Foals are old enough then to be branded. Speaking of
foals, you left your mare and the filly in town?"
"Kells'll give them stable room till next month. I can bring them out
then."
"We'll have a delivery of remounts to make to the camp about then. You can
help haze those in and pick up your own stock on return."
Leon appeared in the doorway. "_Don_ Cazar, the _mesteneoes_--they arrive."
"Good. These people are the real wild-horse experts, Kirby. Not much the
Trinfans don't know about horses." _Don_ Cazar was already on his way to
the door and Drew fell in behind Bartolome.
The Trinfan outfit was small, considering the job they intended, Drew
thought. A cart pulled by two mules, lightly made and packed high, was the
nucleus of their small caravan. Burros--two of them--were roped behind and,
to Drew's surprise, a cow, bawling fretfully and intended, he later
learned, to play foster mother to any unweaned foals which might be picked
up. The cart was driven by a Mexican in leather breeches and jacket over a
red shirt. Behind him rode the boy and girl Drew had seen in the Tubacca
alley, mounted on rangy, nervous horses that had speed in every line of
their under-fleshed bodies. Each rider trailed four spare mounts roped
nose to tail.
"_Buenos dias, Don_ Cazar." For so small a man the Mexican on the cart
seat produced a trumpet-sized voice. He touched the roll-edged brim of his
sombrero, and Drew noted that his arm was crooked as if in the past it had
been broken and poorly set.
"_Buenos dias, Senor_ Trinfan. This house is yours." Rennie went to the
side of the cart. "The west corral is ready for your use as always. Draw
on the stores for any need you may have--"
"_Gracias, Don_ Cazar." It was the thanks of equal to equal. "You have
some late news of the wild ones?"
"Only that the pinto still runs near the well."
"That spotted one--_si_, he is an Apache for cunning, for deviltry of
spirit. It may be that this time he will not be the lucky one. There is in
him a demon. Did I not see him, with my own eyes, kill a foal, tear flesh
from the flanks of its dam when she tried to drop out of the run? _Si_--a
real _diablo_, that one!"
"Get rid of him one way or another, Trinfan. He is a danger to the Range.
He killed another stud this season. I am as sure of that as if I had seen
him in action."
"Ah, the blue one you thought might be a runner to match Oro. _Si_, that
was a great pity, _Don_ Cazar. Well, we shall try, we shall try this time
to put that _diablo_ under!"
An hour later Drew was facing a _diablo_ of his own, with far less
confidence than Hilario Trinfan had voiced. Just how stupid could one be?
Around him now were men trained from early childhood to this life, and he
could show no skill at their employment. All the way out from Texas he had
practiced doggedly with the lariat, and his best fell far short of what a
range-bred child could do.
Yet he had an audience waiting down at the corral. Drew's mouth was a
straight line. He would soon confirm their belief that _Don_ Cazar had in
truth hired Shiloh instead of his owner. But there was no use trying to
duck the ordeal, and the Kentuckian had never been one to put off the
inevitable with a pallid hope that something would turn up to save him.
Only this time, apparently, fortune was going to favor him.
"Which one you wish, _senor?_" Teodoro Trinfan, rope in hand, stood there
ready to cast for one of the milling colts. Why the boy was making that
offer of assistance Drew had no inkling. But to accept would give him a
slight chance to prove he could do part of the work.
He had already made his selection in the corral, though he had despaired
of ever getting that animal at rope's end.
"The black--"
6
He worked in the dust of the smaller corral, with Croaker's help, adapting
his knowledge of eastern gentling the way he had mentally planned it
during the days since he had accepted the job. With the excited and
frightened colt roped to the steady mule Drew tried to think horse, feel
horse, even be horse, shutting out all the rest of the world just as he
had on the day of the race. He must sense the colt's terror of the rope,
his horror of the strange human smell--the man odor which was so
frightening that a blanket hung up at a water hole could keep wild horses
away from the liquid they craved.
Drew talked as he had to Shiloh, as if this black could understand every
word. He twitched the lead rope, and Croaker paced sedately about in a
wide circle, dragging the colt with him. Drew then reached across the bony
back of the mule, pressed his hand up and down the sweaty, shivering hide
of the black. No hurry, must not rush the steady, mild gesture to the
horse that here was a friend.
The Kentuckian had no idea of the passing of time; it was all part of the
knowledge that slow movements, not swift ones, would prevent new panic.
The blanket was shown, allowing the black to sniff down its surface,
before it was flapped back and forth across the colt's back, and finally
left there. Now the saddle. And with that cinched into place, the black
stood quietly beside Croaker.
Drew mounted the mule and rode. The saddled black, loosened from the twin
tie, followed the mule twice around the corral. The rider dismounted from
Croaker, was up on the black. For perilous seconds he felt flesh and
muscles tense under his weight; then the body relaxed.
His hand went up. "Open the gate!" he called softly.
Seeming to realize he was free of the pole walls, the black exploded in a
burst of speed which was close to Shiloh's racing spurt. Drew let him go.
Three-quarters of an hour later he rode back, the black blowing foam, but
answering the rein.
He found _Don_ Cazar, Bartolome, and Hilario Trinfan waiting for him by
the corral. The mustanger walked forward with a lurch, his head thrown far
back so he could look up at Drew from under the wide brim of his sombrero.
"This you could not do with a true wild one," he commented.
"I know that, _senor_. This colt was not an enemy, one who has already
been hunted by man. He was only afraid...."
"But you have the gift. It is born in one--the gift. A man has it, and the
horse always knows, answers to it. Ride with me, _senor_, and try that
gift on the wild ones!"
"Someday--" That was true. Someday Drew did want to ride after the wild
ones. Anse's stories of horse hunting on the Texas plains had first
stirred that desire. Now it was fully awake in him.
_Don_ Cazar inspected the black closely. "Well, Bartolome, what have you
to say now?"
"_Senor_ Kirby knows his business," the Mexican admitted. "Though I think
also that this was no true wild one. He will make a good remount, but he
is no fighter such as others I have seen here."
Drew unsaddled and left the black in with Croaker; he fed both animals a
bait of oats. In the morning he would be at this again. And he still had
not solved the problem of roping. He could not expect Teodoro to come to
his aid a second time. He started slowly back to the bunkhouse.
"_Senor_--?"
Drew raised his wet head from the bunkhouse basin and reached out for a
sacking towel. "Yes?"
Leon sat on a near-by bunk. "I have thought of something--"
"Sounds as if it might be important," Drew commented.
"_Don_ Cazar, he has offered money--a hundred dollars in gold--to have off
the Range that killer pinto stud. But that one, he is like the Apache; he
is not to be caught."
"Can't someone pick him off with a rifle?"
"Perhaps. Only that has also been tried several times, _senor_. My father,
he thought he had killed him only two months ago. But the very next week
did not the pinto come to steal mares from the bay _manada_? It must have
been that he was only creased. No, he is a _diablo_, and he hides in the
rocks where he cannot easily be seen. But there is a plan I have thought
of--" Leon hesitated, and Drew guessed he was about to make a suggestion
which he believed might meet with disapproval.
"And this plan of yours?" Why had Leon come to him with it? Surely young
Rivas had better and closer friends at the Stronghold. Why approach a
newcomer?
"That pinto--he is a fighter; he likes to fight. He will not allow another
stud on the ground he claims."
Drew was beginning to understand. Wild ones were sometimes trapped by a
belled mare staked out to draw them in. But a stud to catch a fighting
stud was another plan altogether.
"You would offer him a fight?"
"_Si_, but not a real fight. Just allow him to believe that there would be
one. Pull him so out of hiding in the rocks--"
"Using what stud for bait?"
"_Senor_ Juanito--he said a stud that would fight too, like Shiloh."
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