BREAKING AWAY
Then, suddenly looking at Black Wing, René knew vast pity for Race Coulter, felt complete sympathy with his desire, understood all his mercilessness. There wasn’t much a man wouldn’t do for such a horse—for Black Wing. There weren’t any more like him. There were creatures out there men called horses. But this was what the Creator had in mind when he made the first one—this royal, fiery thing, poised near the spring, his feet in the wind-stirred ferns, his head high, vigilant while his subjects drank. He pitied all men who hadn’t seen him, was angered that such a horse should be hidden.
Anger shook his whisper: “It’s a crime he’s wild.”
Zion laughed softly. “He ain’t, pard.” And quickly, to repress René’s outburst, he went on: “Oh, he’s wild enough. But just because I let him be. Because I like him that way. He’s broke … though. I broke him. I been a whole year doin’ it. Nobody knows but me … and you, now. That’s all right, ain’t it?”
Right then, with Black Wing in his blood, René didn’t know whether it was or not.
But Zion knew in his heart. “Watch.” Pride flamed in his eyes. “Just watch. I’ll show you.”
Noiselessly, moving some distance from René, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled. Instantly, the wild band broke into flight, vanishing over the opposite slope, all but the horse like sunshine that whirled and stood, himself quivering, tossing his proud head up and sending a silver whistle back. Zion repeated the call. Black Wing circled back toward him, passing from sight beneath the slope. René was sure his eyes had tricked him. Sure he had dreamed Black Wing.
Then he caught the soft thud of unshod hoofs on grass, and before his incredulous eyes, quite close, burst the golden horse, starting at sight of him, but held by the white magic of the young man in buckskin, who was slowly approaching, murmuring endearments.
While Zion slipped a light rope from the front of his shirt, quickly fashioning a hackamore to fit that slim nose, the stallion swung, and René saw, on the satiny curve of one creamy hip, that jet-black wing—the mark that had been on every colt to the Crusader strain, upsetting track dope.
Spellbound, he watched. He saw Zion’s brown arms flash up, saw his dark face press that golden cheek. On his brain forever was seared this picture of the wild young creature and the wild horse, in the full flush of their untried strength, their tameless, fearless spirits sorely tried by the powerful urges that were their heritage.
As Zion lightly bounded to Black Wing’s back, René wanted to stop him, to scream that the rider’s name was Death. But he remembered that Zion must have ridden him often, and that the prophecy could not apply to him. Nevertheless, terror chilled his rapture in the stallion’s grace of motion, as it whirled and danced before him, controlled only by the light hackamore and the pressure of Zion’s knees.
He could have sobbed with relief when, riding close, the young fellow slipped down and stood with one arm flung over Black Wing’s neck.
“Tell me,” earnestly he appealed to René, “are there many out there can beat him?”
“None in the whole world, Zion!”
The young fellow nodded. “That’s what I reckoned. Else folks wouldn’t come in for him. A man did once, you know. A man who knows horses, they say. They say he …” A wild light flared in his eyes. René knew he was thinking of Race. Fiercely, he proclaimed, his arm possessively tightening about that golden head: “He’s mine!”
René felt a mad desire to dispute it, to tell Zion that this horse belonged to the first man to put a brand on him. He even knew an insane longing to be that man.
“There’s others out there would claim him, if they could,” said the young fellow moodily. “Dad told me so … before they locked him away. Black Wing wasn’t born here. Dad stampeded him in with his mother, when he was little. He had a right to her.”
What right had Joel Jore to the racer of Luke Chartres, the mare Sahra?
“Dad always watched him close,” Zion went on. “He said Black Wing was worth a dozen caches, like they got in banks and places. So does Uncle Abel and Yance say that. They say he’d make us very rich, if we had him out of the Picture Rocks.”
So the Jores knew they had a fortune in horseflesh. Then why did they let him run?
“Zion,” René asked, “why don’t you brand him?”
“Brand him?” echoed Zion blankly. “Why?”
“So folks will know he belongs to you. So they won’t try to steal him.”
“But there’s nobody to steal him, pard. Shang might. But he wouldn’t dare try it.”
“Outsiders, I mean!” cried René earnestly. “You Jores ain’t safe, while he’s let run. You couldn’t hide a horse like that so news of him wouldn’t get out. So men wouldn’t risk their necks to get him. Brand him … to stop outsiders from breakin’ in.”
“We stop ’em at Sentry Crags. One man got in … but just because I let him. I wanted him to see what he was missin’. You couldn’t believe Black Wing unless you seen him.”
Nor even then.
“Black Wing,” Zion mused wistfully, “is like I am. Walls weary him. He wants to run.”
Crusader’s son craved a clear track for the release of inborn urges, just as the grandson of old Jerico must have for the universe.
“Pard,” cried Zion, his wild face glowing, “I’m goin’ with you! And I’m ridin’ Black Wing!”
Riding Black Wing out of the basin, out where Luke Chartres could claim him, could command all the forces of wealth and law to enforce that claim—away from the Jores, the only safeguards for him. For once, René had no doubts to whom to be loyal; for once, the interests of Race Coulter and the Jores were identical. Black Wing must stay here.
“You see,” Zion was saying, “you needn’t be afraid for me. I can ride away from anything.”
Away from anything? Little he realized that there were honest men who would band against a Jore, run him down, kill him, for his misconceived ideas of life out there. A stillness crept into the day like the stillness of death. And through it there pierced a girl’s voice, sharp with dread: I’m afraid … there’s things in his blood!
“No!” René cried harshly. “You can’t go! I won’t let you! I won’t be responsible for you!”
His words seemed to hang in the stillness, to ring in his ears as he looked down the valley, because he dared not look at Zion. Expecting some outburst, argument, or reproach, and, hearing nothing, he feared he had hurt Zion too deeply for speech. But, forcing his eyes to look at him, he saw to his intense amazement and relief that the young fellow was unaffected by this ultimatum. Other thoughts seemed to engross him. Accustomed now to his changing moods, René believed he had changed his mind about going.
In terror lest he revert to it, he leaped up. “We’d best be getting back,” he said gently. “They’ll be wonderin’ about me.” René had to repeat it. “We’d best be gettin’ back.”
It was as if Zion had gone a long, long way from him and was reluctant to return. Even when René’s voice reached him, he stood a moment, eyes full of dreams, fingers twisting the stallion’s golden mane. Then: “You go on,” he pleaded, his gaze dropping. “I’m goin’ to run … on Black Wing. I’ve held it in all I can.”
In a flash he was on the stallion and gone—down the slope before him and over the slope beyond; gone like an avenging demon; gone from sight before René, enthralled by Black Wing’s running, realized that he wouldn’t be seeing him again; that he had let Zion go without saying good-bye to him. Then he called: “Zion! Zion!”
But Zion didn’t hear him. With a new ache in his heart, René went down to where his cayuse waited beside the black, that must often have waited for Zion like this. Mounting with ominous weariness, he rode back to face the Jores and be cast out of the Picture Rocks.