Silvermane Read online

  There came a day when Silvermane cut out all of his band except Bess, and they went on alone. They made a spurt and lost the trailers from sight for two days. Then Bess dropped a shoe, and the pursuers came up. As she grew lamer and lamer, the stallion showed his mettle. He did not quit her, but seemed to grow more cunning as pursuit closed in on them. He chose the open places where he could see far, and browsed along, covering rods where formerly he had covered miles.

  One day the trail disappeared on stony ground. And there Dash came in for his share. Behind him the Stewarts climbed a very high round-topped mesa, buttressed and rimmed by cracked cliffs. It was almost insurmountable. They reached the summit by a narrow watercourse, to find a wild and lonesome level enclosed by crags and gray walls. There were cedars and fine thin grass.

  “Corralled,” said Lee laconically as his keen eye swept the surroundings. “He’s never been here before, an’ there’s no way off this mesa except by the back trail, which we’ll close.”

  After fencing the split in the wall, the brothers separated and rode around the rim of the mesa. Silvermane had reached the end of his trail; he was in a trap. Lee saw the stallion flying like a gleam through the cedars, and suddenly came upon Black Bess limping painfully along. Lee galloped up, roped her, and led her, a tired and crippled mustang, back to the place selected for camp.

  “Played out, eh?” said Cuth as he smoothed her dusty neck. “Wal, Bess, you can rest up an’ help us ketch the stallion. Lee, there’s good grazin’ here, an’ we can go down for water.”

  For their operations the hunters chose the highest part of the mesa, a level cedar forest. Opposite a rampart of the cliff wall they cut a curved line of cedars, dropping them close together to form a dense, impassable fence. This enclosed a good space free from trees. From the narrowest point, some twenty yards wide, they cut another line of cedars running diagonally back a mile into the center of the mesa. What with this labor and going down every day to take the mustangs to water, nearly a week elapsed. But time was of no moment to the Stewarts. Then, every day Bess was getting better, and Silvermane more restive. They heard him crashing through the cedars, and saw him standing in open spots, with his silver mane flying and his head turned over his shoulder watching, always watching.

  “It’d be somethin’ to find out how long thet stallion could go without waterin’,” commented Lee. “But we’ll make his tongue hang out tomorrow. An’ jest fer spite we’ll break him with Black Bess.”

  * * * * *

  Daylight came cool and misty; the veils unrolled in the valleys; the purple curtains of the mountains lifted to the snow peaks, and became clouds, and then the red sun burned out of the east.

  “If he runs this way,” said Lee as he mounted Black Bess, “drive him back. Don’t let him in the corral till he’s tired.”

  The mesa sloped slightly eastward and the cedar forest soon gave place to sage and juniper. Upon the extreme eastern point of the mesa Lee jumped Silvermane out of a clump of bushes. A race ensued for half the length of the sage flat, then the stallion made into the cedars and disappeared. Lee slowed down, trotting up the easy slope, and cut across somewhat to the right. Not long after he heard Cuth yelling and saw Silvermane tearing through the scrub. Lee proceeded to the point where he had left Cuth and waited. Soon the pound of hoofs thudded through the forest, coming nearer and nearer. Silvermane appeared straight ahead, running easily. At sight of Lee and the black mare he snorted viciously and, veering to the left, took to the open. Lee watched him with sheer admiration. The stallion had a beautiful stride and ran seemingly without effort. Then Cuth galloped up and reined in a spent and foam-flecked mustang.

  “Thet stallion can run some,” was his tribute.

  “He sure can. Change hosses now an’ be ready to fall in line when I chase him back.”

  With that Lee coursed away and soon crossed the trail of Silvermane and followed it at a sharp trot, threading in and out of the aisles and glades of the forest. He passed through to the rim, and circled half the mesa before he saw the stallion again. Silvermane stood on a ridge, looking backward. When the hunter yelled, Silvermane leaped as if he had been shot and plunged down the ridge. Lee headed to cut him off from the cedars. But the stallion forged to the front, gained the cedar level, and twisted in and out of the clumps of trees. Again Lee slowed down to save his mustang. Bess was warming up, and Lee wanted to see what she could do at close range. Keeping within sight of Silvermane, the hunter leisurely chased him around and around the forest, up and down the sage slopes, along the walls, at last to get him headed for the only open stretch on the mesa. Lee rode across a hollow and came out on the level only a few rods behind Silvermane.

  “Hi! Hi! Hi!” yelled the hunter, spurring Bess forward like a black streak. Uttering a piercing snort of terror, the gray stallion lunged out, for the first time panic-stricken, and he lengthened his stride in a way that was wonderful to see. Then at the right moment Cuth darted in from his hiding place, whooping at the top of his voice and whirling his lasso. Silvermane won that race down the open stretch, but it cost him his best. At the turn he showed his fear and plunged wildly first to the left, then to the right. Cuth pushed him relentlessly, while Lee went back, tied up Black Bess, and saddled Billy, a wiry mustang of great endurance. Then the two hunters remorselessly hemmed Silvermane between them, turned him where they wished, at last to run him around the corner of the fence of cut cedars down the line through the narrow gate into the corral prepared for him.

  “Hold here!” Lee cried at the gate. “I’ll go in an’ drive him around an’ around till he’s done, then, when I yell, you stand aside an’ rope him as he goes out.”

  Silvermane ran around the triangular space, plunged up the steep walls, and crashed over the dead cedars. Then as sense and courage gave way more and more to terror he broke into desperate headlong flight. He ran blindly, and every time he passed the guarded gateway, his eyes were wilder and his stride more labored.

  “Hi! Hi! Hi!” yelled Lee.

  Cuth pulled out of the opening and hid behind the line of cedars, his lasso swinging loosely. Silvermane saw the vacated opening and sprang forward with a hint of his old speed. As he passed through, a yellow loop flashed in the sun, circling, narrowing, and he seemed to run right into it. The loop whipped close around the glossy neck and the rope stretched taut. Cuth’s mustang staggered under the violent shock, went to his knees, but struggled up and held firmly. Silvermane reared aloft. There Lee, darting up in a cloud of dust, slid his lasso. The noose nipped the right foreleg of the stallion. He plunged down and for an instant there was a wild straining struggle, then he fell heaving and groaning. In a twinkling Lee sprang off and, slipping the rope that threatened to strangle Silvermane, replaced it by a stout halter, and made this fast to a cedar.

  Whereupon the Stewarts stood back and gazed at their prize. Silvermane was badly spent, but not to a dangerous point; he was wet with foam but no fleck of blood showed; his superb coat showed scratches, but none cut the flesh. He got up after a while, panting heavily, and trembling in all his muscles. He was a beaten horse, but he showed no viciousness, only the wild fear of a trapped animal. He eyed Black Bess, and then the hunters, and last the halter.

  “Lee, will you look at him…will you jest look at thet mane!” ejaculated Cuth.

  “Wal,” replied Lee, “I reckon thet reward, an’ then some, can’t buy him.”

  TAPPAN’S BURRO

  I

  Tappan gazed down upon the newly born little burro with something of pity and consternation. It was not a vigorous offspring of the redoubtable Jennie, champion of all the numberless burros he had driven in his desert prospecting years. He could not leave it there to die. Surely it was not strong enough to follow its mother, and to kill it was beyond him.

  “Poor little devil,” soliloquized Tappan. “Reckon neither Jennie nor I wanted it to be born…. I’ll have to hold up in this cam
p a few days. You can never tell what a burro will do. It might fool us an’ grow strong all of a sudden.”

  Whereupon Tappan left Jennie and her tiny, gray, lop-eared baby to themselves and leisurely set about making permanent camp. The water at this oasis was not much to his liking, but it was drinkable, and he felt he must put up with it. For the rest the oasis was desirable enough as a camping site. Desert wanderers like Tappan favored the lonely water holes. This one was up inside the bold brow of the Chocolate Mountains where rocky wall met the desert sand, and a green patch of palo verdes and mesquites proved the presence of water. It had a magnificent view down a many-leagued slope of desert growths, across the dark belt of green and shining strip of red that marked the Río Colorado, and on to the upflung Arizona land, range lifting to range until the saw-toothed peaks notched the blue sky.

  Locked in the iron fastnesses of these desert mountains was gold. Tappan, if he had any calling, was a prospector. But the lure of gold did not bind him to this wandering life any more than the freedom of it. He had never made a rich strike. About the best he could ever do was to dig enough gold to grubstake himself for another prospecting trip into some remote corner of the American Desert. Tappan knew the arid Southwest from San Diego to the Pecos River and from Picacho on the Colorado to the Tonto Basin. Few prospectors had the strength and endurance of Tappan. He was a giant in build, and at thirty-five had never yet reached the limit of his physical force.

  With hammer and pick and magnifying glass, Tappan scaled the bare ridges. He was not an expert in testing minerals. He knew he might easily pass by a rich vein of ore. But he did his best, sure at least that no prospector could get more than he out of the pursuit of gold. Tappan was more of a naturalist than a prospector, and more of a dreamer than either. Many were the idle moments that he sat staring down the vast reaches of the valleys, or watching some creature of the wasteland, or marveling at the vivid hues of desert flowers.

  Tappan waited two weeks at this oasis for Jennie’s baby burro to grow strong enough to walk. The very day that Tappan decided to break camp he found signs of gold at the head of a wash above the oasis. Quite by chance, as he was looking for his burro, he struck his pick into a place no different from a thousand others there and hit into a pocket of gold. He cleaned the pocket out before sunset, the richer for several thousand dollars.

  “You brought me luck,” said Tappan to the little gray burro, staggering around its mother. “Your name is Jenet. You’re Tappan’s burro, an’ I reckon he’ll stick to you.”

  * * * * *

  Jenet belied the promise of her birth. Like a seed in fertile ground, she grew. Winter and summer Tappan journeyed from one trading post to another, and his burro traveled with him. Jenet had an especially good training. Her mother had happened to be a remarkably good burro before Tappan had bought her. Tappan had patience; he found leisure to do things, and he had something of pride in Jenet. Whenever he happened to drop into Ehrenberg or Yuma or any freighting station, some prospector always tried to buy Jenet. She grew as large as a medium-size mule, and a three hundred pound pack was no load to discommode her.

  Tappan, in common with most lonely wanderers of the desert, talked to his burro. As the years passed, this habit grew until Tappan would talk to Jenet just to hear the sound of his voice. Perhaps that was all that kept him human.

  “Jenet, you’re worthy of a happier life,” Tappan would say as he unpacked her after a long day’s march over the barren land. “You’re a ship of the desert. Here we are, with grub an’ water, a hundred miles from any camp. An’ what but you could have fetched me here? No horse, no mule, no man. Nothin’ but a camel, an’ so I call you ship of the desert. But for you an’ your kind, Jenet, there’d be no prospectors, an’ few gold mines. Reckon the desert would be still an unknown waste. You’re a great beast of burden, Jenet, an’ there’s no one to sing your praise.” And of a golden sunrise, when Jenet was packed and ready to face the cool, sweet fragrance of the desert, Tappan was wont to say: “Go along with you, Jenet. The mornin’s fine. Look at the mountains yonder callin’ us. It’s only a step down there. All purple an’ violet! It’s the life for us, my burro, an’ Tappan’s as rich as if all these sands were pearls.” But sometimes, at sunset, when the way had been long and hot and rough, Tappan would bend his shaggy head over Jenet, and talk in a different mood. “Another day gone, Jenet, another journey ended…an’ Tappan is only older, wearier, sicker. There’s no reward for your faithfulness. I’m only a desert rat, livin’ from hole to hole. No home! No face to see! Only the ghost of memories. Some sunset, Jenet, we’ll reach the end of the trail. An’ Tappan’s bones will bleach in the sands. An’ no one will know or care.”

  When Jenet was ten years old, she would have taken the blue ribbon in competition with all the burros of the Southwest. She was unusually large and strong, perfectly proportioned, sound in every particular, and practically tireless. But these were not the only characteristics that made prospectors envious of Tappan. Jenet had the common virtues of all good burros magnified to an unbelievable degree. Moreover, she had sense and instinct that to Tappan bordered on the supernatural.

  During these years Tappan’s trail criss-crossed the mineral region of the Southwest. But as always the rich strike held aloof. It was like the pot of gold buried at the foot of the rainbow. Jenet knew the trails and the water holes better than Tappan. She could follow a trail obliterated by drifting sand or cut out by running water. She could scent at long distance a new spring on the desert or a strange water hole. She never wandered far from camp so that Tappan would have to walk far in search of her. Wild burros, the bane of most prospectors, held no charm for Jenet, and she had never yet shown any especial liking for a tame burro. This was the strangest feature of Jenet’s complex character. Burros were noted for their habit of pairing off, and forming friendships for one or more comrades. These relationships were permanent. But Jenet still remained fancyfree.

  Tappan scarcely realized how he relied upon this big, gray, serene beast of burden. Of course, when chance threw him among men of his calling, he would brag about her, but he had never really appreciated Jenet. In his way Tappan was a brooding, plodding fellow, not conscious of sentiment. When he bragged about Jenet, it was her great qualities upon which he dilated. But what he really liked best about her were the little things of every day.

  During the earlier years of her training, Jenet had been a thief. She would pretend to be asleep for hours just to get a chance to steal something out of camp. Tappan had broken this habit in its incipiency. But he never quite altogether trusted her. Jenet was a burro. Jenet ate anything offered her. She could fare for herself or go without. Whatever Tappan had left from his own meals was certain to be rich dessert for Jenet. Every mealtime she would stand near the campfire, with one great long ear drooping, and the other standing erect. Her expression was one of meekness, of unending patience. She would lick a tin can until it shone resplendently. On long, hard, barren trails Jenet’s deportment did not vary from that where the water holes and grassy patches were many. She did not need to have grain or grass. Brittle-bush and sage were good fare for Jenet. She could eat greasewood, a desert plant that protected itself with a sap as sticky as varnish and far more dangerous to animals. She could eat cactus. Tappan had seen her break off leaves of the prickly pear cactus and stamp upon them with her fore hoofs, mashing off the thorns, so that she could eat the succulent pulp. She liked mesquite beans, leaves of willow, and all the trailing vines of the desert. She could subsist in an arid wasteland where a man would have died in short order.

  No ascent or descent was too hard or dangerous for Jenet, provided it was possible of accomplishment. She would refuse a trail that was impossible. She seemed to have an uncanny instinct both for what she could do, and what was beyond a burro. Tappan had never known her to fail on something that she stuck to persistently. Swift streams of water, always bugbears to burros, did not stop Jenet. She hated
quicksand, but could be trusted to navigate it, if that were possible. When she stepped gingerly, with little inch steps, out upon thin crust of ice or salty crust of desert sinkhole, Tappan would know that it was safe, or she would turn back. Thunder and lightning, intense heat or bitter cold, the sirocco sandstorm of the desert, the white dust of the alkali wastes, these were all the same to Jenet.

  One August, the hottest and driest of his desert experience, Tappan found himself working a most promising claim in the lower reaches of the Panamint Mountains on the northern slope above Death Valley. It was a hard country at the most favorable season; in August it was terrible. The Panamints were infested by various small gangs of desperadoes—outlaw claim-jumpers where opportunity afforded and out-and-out robbers, even murderers, where they could not get the gold any other way. Tappan had been warned not to go into this region alone, but he never heeded any warnings. The idea that he would ever strike a gold claim big enough to make himself an attractive target for outlaws seemed preposterous and not worth considering. Tappan had become a wanderer from the unbreakable habit of it. Much to his amazement he struck a rich ledge of free gold in a cañon of the Panamints, and he worked from daylight until dark. He forgot about the claim-jumpers, until one day he saw Jenet’s long ears go up in the manner habitual with her when she saw strange men. Tappan watched the rest of that day, but did not catch a glimpse of any living thing. It was a desolate place, shut-in, red-walled, hazy with heat, and brooding with an eternal silence.

  Not long after that Tappan discovered boot tracks of several men adjacent to his camp, and in an out-of-the-way spot that persuaded him that he was being watched by claim-jumpers who were not going to jump his claim in this torrid heat, but meant to let him dig the gold and then kill him! Tappan was not the kind of man to be afraid. He grew wrathful and stubborn. He had six small canvas bags of gold and did not mean to lose them. Still he grew worried. Now what’s best to do, he pondered. I needn’t give it away that I’m wise. Reckon I’d better act natural. But I can’t stay here longer. My claim’s about worked out. An’ these jumpers are smart enough to know it. I’ve got to make a break at night. What to do?