Silvermane Read online

  Generally mustang wranglers, men who lived by catching mustangs, were held in contempt by the rangers and cowboys of that iron-bound desert country. For mustangs were harder to capture than deer, and, when captured and broken, brought only a few dollars per head. The Stewarts however, though they had never earned any money to speak of, were famous all over the States. Stories of their wonderful pursuits, of their fleet mustangs and trailing hounds, had become campfire gossip on the ranges. So their advent at Bain aroused interest.

  Lee and Cuth Stewart were tall, lean Mormons, as bronzed as desert Navajos, cool, silent, gray-eyed, still-faced. Both wore crude homespun garments much the worse for wear; boots that long before had given the best in them; laced leather wristbands, thin and shiny from contact with lassoes, and old gray slouch hats that would have disgraced cowboys. But this threadbare effect did not apply to the rest of the outfit. It showed a care that must have been in proportion to its hard use. And the five, beautiful racy mustangs, Black Bess in particular, proved that the Stewarts were Indians at the end of every day, for they certainly had camped where there were grass and water. The pack of hounds shared interest with the mustangs, and the leader, a great yellow, somber-eyed hound, Dash, by name, could have made friends with everybody had he felt inclined.

  “We calculated, boys,” held forth the foreman, “thet if anybody could round up Silvermane an’ his bunch, it’d be you. Every ranger between here and Marypoole has tried an’ failed. Silvermane is a rare stallion. He has more than hoss sense. It’s the opinion of a good many of us fellers thet he wasn’t born wild, an’ thet he came into this country somewhere from Nevada. Fer two years now no one has been in rifle shot of him, fer the word has long since gone out to kill him. It’s funny now to think how many rangers tried to corral him, trap him, run him down. He’s been a heap of trouble to all the ranchers. He goes right into a bunch of hosses, fights an’ kills the stallions, an’ leads off what he wants of the rest. His band is scattered all over, an’ no man can count ’em, but he’s got at least five hundred hosses off the ranges. An’ he’s got to be killed or there won’t be a safe grazin’ spot left in Sevier County.”

  “How’re we to know this hoss’ trail when we do hit it?” asked Lee Stewart.

  “You can’t miss it. His right fore track has a notch thet bites in clean every step he takes. One of my rangers came in yesterday an’ reported fresh sign of Silvermane at Cedar Springs, sixteen miles north along the red ridge there. An’ he’s goin’ straight fer his hidin’ place. Whenever he’s been hard chased, he hits it back up there an’ lays low fer a while. It’s rough country, though I reckon it won’t be to you cañon fellers.”

  “How about water?”

  “Good chances fer water beyond Cedar, I reckon, though I don’t know any springs. It’s rare an’ seldom any of us work up as far as Cedar. A scaly country up thet way…black sage, an’ thet’s all.”

  The Stewarts reached Cedar Springs that afternoon. It was a hot place; a few cedars, struggling for existence, lifted dead, twisted branches to the sun; a scant growth of grass greened the few shady spots, and a thin stream of water ran between glistening borders of alkali. A drove of mustangs had visited the spring since dawn and had obliterated all tracks made before.

  While Cuth made camp, Lee changed his saddle to another mustang and rode up the ridge. His idea was to get a look at the country. The climb was not particularly steep, but it was long and took time, as he had to pick his way and zigzag the bare stony slopes. At last he reached the top, and caught a breath of cool wind. From where he stood, the ridge wound northward, growing rougher and higher. Ridges rolled to meet it from the left, while to the right it shelved off into the desert. Far northward a long black plateau leveled the horizon, and at each end a snow-capped peak shone coldly in the sun. Lee regretted that this vantage point was not higher, but he fixed in his mind as best he could the lay of the land, and returned to camp.

  “We’re jest on the edge of wild hoss country,” he announced to Cuth. “Thet stallion probably had a picked bunch an’ was drivin’ them higher up. It’s gettin’ hot these days an’ the browse is witherin’. I seen old deer sign on the ridge, an’ cougar an’ coyote sign trailin’ after. They’re all makin’ fer higher up. I reckon we’ll find ’em all on the Sevier plateau.”

  “Did you see the plateau?” asked Cuth.

  “Plain. Near a hundred miles away yet. Jest a long flat ridge black with timber. Then there’s the two snow peaks, Terrill an’ Hilgard, pokin’ up their cold noses. I reckon the plateau rises off these ridges, an’ the Sevier River an’ the mountains are on the other side. So we’ll push on fer the plateau. We might come up with Silvermane an’ his bunch.”

  * * * * *

  All the next day they rode up the hard-packed trail winding along the base of the ridge. It was a long, gradual ascent, with the ridge ever growing rockier and more rugged, and the desert slipping below. Cedar trees flourished toward the close of the day’s march and then merged thin yellow-green with the fresh dark green of the piñons. Sunset found them halting at a little water hole among a patch of cedars and boulders. First Cuth slipped the packs and Lee measured out the oats. On a hard trail the brothers always packed grain for their mounts. The fact that the mustangs when eating grain were also eating the profits of a trip never entered into the Stewarts’ calculations. The horses first, then the hounds, and then themselves—that was the way of the mustang wranglers. Having ministered to the wants of their dumb friends, Lee and Cuth set about getting supper for themselves. Cuth had the flour and water mixed to a nicety and Lee had the Dutch oven on some red-hot coals when, moved by a common instinct, they stopped work and looked up.

  The five mustangs were not munching their oats; their heads were up. Black Bess, the keenest of the quintet, moved restlessly, and then took a few steps toward the opening in the cedars.

  “Bess!” called Lee sternly. The mare stopped.

  “She’s got a scent,” whispered Cuth, reaching for his rifle. “Mebbe it’s a cougar.”

  “Mebbe, but I never knowed Bess to go lookin’ up one…. Hist! Look at Dash.”

  The yellow hound had risen from among his pack and stood warily shifting his nose. He sniffed the wind, turned around and around, and slowly stiffened with his head pointed up the ridge. The other hounds caught something, at least the manner of their leader, and became restless.

  “Down, Dash, down,” said Lee, and then with a smile to Cuth: “Did you hear it?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Listen.”

  The warm breeze came down in puffs from the ridge; it rustled the cedars and blew fragrant whiffs of smoke into the hunters’ faces and presently it bore a whistle, a low prolonged whistle. Cuth rose noiselessly to his feet and stood still. So horses, hounds, and men waited, listening. The sound broke the silence again, much clearer, a keen, sharp whistle. And the third time it rang down from the summit of the ridge, splitting the air, strong, trenchant, the fiery shrill whistle of a challenging stallion. Black Bess reared an instant straight up, and came down quivering.

  “Look,” whispered Lee tensely.

  On the very summit of the bare ridge stood a noble horse clearly silhouetted against the purple and gold of sunset sky. He was an iron-gray, and he stood wild and proud, his long silver-white mane waving in the wind.

  “Silvermane!” exclaimed Cuth.

  He stood there one moment, long enough to make a picture that would never be forgotten by the wild-horse hunters, then moved back along the ridge and disappeared. Other horses, blacks and bays, showed above the sage for a moment, and they, too, passed out of sight.

  “I couldn’t never shoot that stallion,” whispered Lee.

  “No more could I,” replied Cuth. “Now, what do you make of thet whistlin’?”

  “Jest grazin’ along easy-like. The wind sure favors us. He came to the hilltop an’ jest snorted down,
like a stallion will, to let anything as might be there know he could lick it. Thet whistle of his was jest plain fight. But Lord! Wasn’t he a beauty? I never seen such a hoss, never, an’ never any as could come near him.”

  “He sure was pretty. An’, Lee, to my way of thinkin’ he jest might hev winded our mustangs, Bess, anyhow. You know how we’ve had proof of scents between hosses as passed all our understandin’. Bess might need watchin’.”

  Lee shook his head gravely. “Mebbe. It was kinder strange. But you know, if we can’t trust Bess, we can’t never trust a hoss again. I reckon we’d better lay low tonight, keep the hounds an’ hosses in, an’ get an early start fer the next water hole. Thet bunch’ll drink tomorrow or next day if they ain’t scared.”

  * * * * *

  Before daylight the brothers were up and at dawn filed out of the cedar grove. A band of coyotes caused some apprehension, as they followed yelping and barking, and might have alarmed the wild mustangs. The rising sun, however, soon sent the coyotes back to their lairs, allowing the hunters to proceed in a silence that satisfied them. The trained horses scarcely rattled a stone, and the hounds trotted ahead, unmindful of foxes and rabbits brushed out of the sage.

  The morning passed and the afternoon waned. Green willows began to skirt the banks of a sandy wash and the mustangs sniffed as they smelled water. Presently the Stewarts entered a rocky corner refreshingly bright and green with grass, trees, and flowers, and pleasant with the murmur of bees and fall of water. A heavily flowing spring gushed from under a cliff and dashed down over stones to form a pool, then ran out to seep away and lose itself in the sandy wash. Flocks of blackbirds chattered around the pool and rabbits darted everywhere.

  “It’d take a hull lot of chasin’ to drive a mustang from comin’ regular to that spring,” commented Cuth.

  “Sure, it’s a likely place, an’ we can throw up a corral here in short order.”

  They hobbled the mustangs, got supper, and then set to work on the corral. The plan was to build a circular fence around the pool and to leave an opening at the most favorable point, which was a wide beaten trail. By nightfall they had the pool enclosed except on the upper side where the water tumbled over a jumble of rocks, a place no horse could climb out, and on the lower side, where they left the opening for the gate. The gate was the important part and now presented a problem.

  “We can’t do no more tonight,” said Lee, “an’ we’ll hev to take chances on Silvermane comin’ down to drink tonight. Mebbe it’ll be a couple of days before he comes, an’ thet’ll give us time to fix up a gate an’ weak places in the fence.”

  All that night Lee and Cuth lay under the shadow of the corral, waiting and watching. The next morning they climbed the ridge and brought down three long pine poles. These they fashioned into a gate, and as it was found impossible to swing such a ponderous affair they concluded to let it lie flat before the opening, to be raised quickly after the wild mustangs had gone in to drink. In the afternoon the hunters slept with only Dash on guard; at nightfall they were ready and waiting for their quarry. What little breeze there was favored their position, and the night promised to be clear and starlit. In the early hours a prowling coyote bawled lonesomely, and deer came down to drink. Later soft-footed animals slipped with pad-like tread over the spring. At midnight the breeze failed and a dead stillness set in. It was not broken until the after part of the night, and then suddenly by the shrill piercing neigh of a mustang. The Stewarts raised themselves sharply and looked at each other in the starlight.

  “Did you hear thet?” asked Lee.

  “I jest did. Sounded like Bess.”

  “It was Bess, darn her black hide. She never did thet before.”

  “Mebbe she’s winded Silvermane.”

  “Mebbe. But she ain’t hobbled, an’, if she’d whistle like thet fer him, she’s liable to make off after him. Now what to do?”

  “It’s too late. I warned you before. We can’t spoil what may be a chance to get the stallion. Let Bess alone. Many’s the time she’s had a chance to make off, an’ didn’t do it. Let’s wait.”

  “Reckon it’s all we can do now. If she called thet stallion it proves one thing…we can’t never break a wild mare perfectly. The wild spirit may sleep in her blood, mebbe fer years, but some time it’ll answer to….”

  “Shut up…listen,” interrupted Cuth.

  In the strained moments following, there was no sound, and no movement till Dash put his nose high, and turned slowly in a circle. His significant action meant to the hunters that he had passed the uneasy stage prior to the certainty of a scent, and was now baffled only by the direction.

  “There,” whispered Lee.

  From far up on the ridge came down the faint rattling of stones.

  “Mustangs…an’ they’re comin’ down,” replied Cuth.

  Long experience had brought the brothers patience, but moments such as these, waiting in the shadow, had never come to be tranquil. Presently sharp clicks preceded the rattles, and, when these sounds grew together and became louder, the hearts of the hunters began to quicken. The sounds merged into a regular rhythmic tramp. It came down the ridge softened in the sandy wash below the spring, opened up again with a steady click and thump, and came straight for the corral.

  “I see ’em,” whispered Cuth. Lee answered by a pressure of his hand. It was an anxious moment, for the mustangs had to pass hunters and hounds before entering the gate. A black bobbing line wound out of the cedars. Then the starlight showed the line to be the mustangs marching in single file. They passed with drooping heads, hurrying a little toward the last, and unsuspiciously entered the corral gate.

  “Twenty odd,” whispered Lee, “but all blacks an’ bays. Silvermane wasn’t in thet bunch. Mebbe it wasn’t his….”

  Among the cedars rose the peculiar halting thump of hobbled horses trying to cover ground, and following that snorts and crashings of brush and the pound of plunging hoofs. Then out of the cedars moved two shadows, the first a great gray horse with snowy mane, the second a small, graceful, shiny black mustang. Silvermane and Black Bess. The stallion, in the fulfillment of a conquest such as had made him famous on the wild ranges, was magnificent in action and wheeling about her. Whinnying, cavorting, he arched his splendid neck and pushed his head against her. His importunity was that of a master. Suddenly Bess snorted and whirled down the trail. Silvermane whistled one short blast of anger or terror, and thundered after. Black Bess was at last true to her desert blood. They vanished in the gray shadow of the cedars, as a stream of frightened mustangs poured out of the corral in a clattering roar.

  Gradually the dust settled. Cuth looked at Lee and Lee looked at Cuth. For a while neither spoke. Cuth generously forbade saying to his brother: “I told you so.” The failure of their plan was only an incident of horse wrangling and in no way discomfited them. But Lee was angry at his favorite.

  “You was right, Cuth,” he said. “Thet mare placed us at the finish. Ketched when she was a yearling, broke the best of any mustang we ever had, trained with us fer five years, an’ helped down many a stallion…an’ she runs off wild with thet big white-maned brute.”

  “Wal, they make a team, an’ they’ll stick,” replied Cuth. “An’ so’ll we stick, if we have to chase them to the Great Salt Basin.”

  * * * * *

  Next morning when the sun tipped the ridge rosy red, Lee put the big yellow hound on the notched track of Silvermane, and the long trail began. At noon the hunters saw the white-maned stallion heading his black across a rising plain, the first step of the mighty plateau stretching to the northward. As they climbed, grass and water became more frequently met with along the trail. For the most part Lee kept on the tracks of the mustang leader without the aid of the hound; Dash was used in the grass and on the scaly ridges where the trail was hard to find.

  The succeeding morning Cuth spied Silvermane watching them from
a high point. Another day found them on top of the plateau, among the huge brown pine trees and patches of snow and clumps of aspen. It took two days to cross the plateau—sixty miles. Silvermane did not go down but doubled on his trail. Rimming a plateau was familiar work for the hunters, and twice they came within sight of the leader and his band. Once a bunch of mustangs trooped out of a hollow and went over the wall, down on the back trail. Silvermane was not among them, and Dash did not split but kept on into the timber.

  “He’s broke up his band, cut out some,” commented Lee.

  “Wal, wait till he takes to weathered stone, then we’ll see,” replied Cuth.

  Silvermane crossed the plateau again and then struck down into the valley. The trail was a long steep slope of weathered stone, and the pursuers zigzagged it with the ease of long practice in the cañon country. Many times the great stallion could be seen looking back. Evidently this steady, persistent pursuit nonplussed him. After these surveys he always plunged away in a cloud of dust. He crossed the Sevier Valley to the river, and turned back. The river was raging from thaws in the mountains. Then he struck up the valley. Another day put his pursuers high up among the slides of snow and silver spruces, and another across a divide into a rugged country of badlands, where barrens begin to show, and high mesas lift flat heads covered with patches of sage and grey-green cedars. So it went on day by day, but Silvermane turned back no more. He had marked a straight course, though every mile of it grew wilder. Sometimes for hours the hunters had him in sight, and always beside him was the little black they knew to be Bess.