Chapter Fourteen

The joy which had been in Bill Tenney as he rushed the great stallion across the plains had gone out of him, after a time. For the blood-stiffened shirt rasped against his back, and every fold of it was a torment. Therefore he halted White Horse.

That was not so easily done. For when he took hold on the reins of the hackamore and gave a stout pull, the stallion bored out his head and doubled his pace. The slight humping of the back gave sure signal that pitching was about to start, and Tenney had a dizzy picture of the monster hurling him to the ground, and then flinging away into freedom.

So Tenney stopped pulling on the reins and talked gently. The talking did far more than the hauling at the reins. Gradually White Horse came back into the hand of the rider, so that a mere touch on the reins was enough to check him to a walk.

After that, afraid to dismount, Bill Tenney gradually worked the torment of the shirt off his welted back, rolled it, and tied it to the side of the saddle by a pair of the dangling leather strings. Then he could go on with a greater comfort; he could even forget his pain somewhat.

With that forgetfulness, however, there began another torment that was of the mind alone. He had let his friend fall into the hands of the soldiers in his place. But long before, he had planned to betray that friendship. The whole logic of his life taught Bill Tenney to take what he could, without remorse. But all other things he had taken by craft or by sheer daring, and on this occasion he had received a free gift.

He began to tell himself that his brain was softening, and that he was a fool.

He had White Horse under him; he was equipped to defy the dangers of the prairies. If the ways of this part of the world were strange to him, he would soon grow used to them. And he had a rifle and enough ammunition to assure him of food for a long time. He had lost the gold that he had stolen; he had gained a thorough flogging; but all of these payments were more than made up for by the possession of the stallion. Therefore, why should he not be happy? Why should he be tormented by a sense of loss.

“Rusty,” he said aloud, “is just a poor half-witted fool.”

He was sorry that he had spoken those words aloud, because they awakened in his mind undying echoes that rolled continually through his brain.

“A poor, half-witted fool. A poor, half-witted fool,” he repeated.

But half-wits do not venture into a fort crowded with armed men, for the sake of a friend. Fools are not apt to defy the law and give up the prospect of a marriage, for the sake of a friend.

Somewhere in Bill Tenney’s soul hammer strokes were falling on an iron anvil. A new idea was ringing out: Friendship is sacred. Friendship is sacred.

“Damn friendship!” snarled Tenney aloud.

The stallion leaped suddenly ahead and nearly unseated him, and for an instant, with chilling blood, he felt that the horse had understood the blasphemy he had uttered. Aye, the whole world would detest him if it could hear what he had said.

He pacified himself somewhat by deciding that, when opportunity offered, he would return to the fort; he would kill Major Marston, and he would liberate Rusty Sabin. In this way, he would redeem his pride and his self-respect and so complete his payment to Sabin.

In this way he put his conscience to sleep, for the time being, and concentrated his attention on the stallion.

He had watched, during the early part of the ride, exactly how Rusty had managed the stallion, and he had heard the terms of the ordering. But it seemed that between the horse and his real owner there was little need of speech. By a gesture, Rusty could control his mount. It was as though some electric current from Rusty’s brain flowed down through the rawhide reins and touched the brain of the animal. As for Bill Tenney, he had to experiment, and only in that manner could he work out carefully one possibility after another.

The horse reined across the neck, of course, but Tenney discovered that he responded to touches, not to jerks and hauls. A lifting of the reins was enough to make him increase his gait, and lifting the reins higher at any time was enough to send him away like a bullet, at full speed. Above all, the animal seemed to be studying his rider, keeping his head a trifle turned so that the brightness of his eye could be seen as he looked back. To urge him with the flat of the hand or with the heel was instantly to invite trouble. And the best way, plainly, was to treat him as a partner, a traveling companion with a proud volition of his own and plenty of brain to work out every problem of the trail.

This investigation of the stallion’s properties kept Bill Tenney thoroughly employed until he struck one of those patches of badlands through which he had been guided by Rusty, during the night. And in the bottom of the first gulley, he struck a rivulet of water that was too much for him to resist.

He was about to dismount, when he saw a huge buffalo wolf sitting on an eminence a quarter of a mile away from him, and obviously watching. It gave Bill Tenney an odd thrill to see the brute.

The wolf began to scratch with a hind leg, and Tenney, irritated, he hardly knew why, reached for his rifle. Instantly the wolf was gone from view.

He bathed his back slowly, carefully. The effect of the cold water was to make him groan with relief. He was feverish, of course, and the cold sopping cloth with which he squeezed or patted the water onto his bare flesh gave him the most exquisite relief.

Looking up from that occupation, he saw, not two hundred yards away, on the opposite side of the ravine, a second wolf as big as the first. But this one was showing itself with more caution, only the head and shoulders appearing. Again, Tenney snatched up his rifle and tried a snap shot, but the brute disappeared just as the trigger was pulled.

Well, if the wolves knew firearms as well as that, they signified hard hunting.

White Horse began to show a great deal of interest in this second appearance of a wolf. He danced away a step or two, and then stood beautifully alert, turning his head and looking anxiously up and down the shallow cañon that the stream had ripped out of the easy face of the plain. The clay bluffs looked as hard, almost as polished, as rock. And White Horse seemed to find danger in the very air that he snuffed.

Bill Tenney could remember what he had heard—that a horse of the prairies is more keenly on guard than a human hunter. Perhaps there was danger at hand. He was about to step over to White Horse and remount when a chorus of shrill yells struck his heart cold. The cries came from both up and down the valley. And now a troop of half a dozen Indians appeared from either side, racing around the bends and bearing down on him.