II
Bart was past twelve, when he was missing for a day or two, and rode back into town on a gray rat-tailed pony that was raked from shoulder to crupper with fresh wounds and old scars. Letchie Welton, in the capacity of deputy sheriff, halted him at the edge of town, looking the outfit over.
‘Where did you get that briscut?’
‘Over at the Cup Q.’
‘Did you do all that fresh hookin’ on his hide?’
‘No.’
‘Buy him?’
‘No, they didn’t want him much over at the rancho. Said I could have him for sitting thirty seconds—’
‘And you did?’
‘Yep—more. I ain’t got off.’
Letchie Welton looked queer and rode back to the placers where he found Bob Leadley. ‘Your kid’s just brought in a man-killer from the Cup Q—a gray rat-tail I remember seein’ over there. If I was you, Bob, I’d put a bullet in the head of that cayuse, and I’d leave off work and do it now—before he kicks a hole out of Bart’s face or eats his scalp off.’ Letchie Welton went on to recall further details of Rat-tail’s reputation—of the fits he threw, the men he had maimed.
Bob left the placer and went to his own little corral where he found Rat-tail unsaddled, Bart leaning in the fence shadow, looking over his new possession.
‘I hear he’s an outlaw, Bart. I wouldn’t ride him if I was you.’
‘I rode him over from the Cup Q all right.’
‘I know. He may have been glad to get away from there—but look at him!’ Bob took a few steps closer to the old gray head which suddenly looked deformed. A float of baleful red appeared back of the near, filmy eye.
‘I’ve seen that look once or twice before, Bart, and I’ll have to tell you to stay off him.’
‘All he knew from the Cup Q was rakin’ and quirtin’, Dad.’
‘But that ain’t the look of a nice hoss.’
‘I like him.’
‘It ain’t the look of a broke hoss, Bart.’
‘I don’t want no broke hoss.’
‘You’ll have to stay off, that’s all—’
Bob saw that deep questioning look in the eyes slowly turned his way—no anger, no hate, but separateness, a widening gulf.
‘At least, stay off him till I try him out for a few days.’
Bob was sincere in his attempt to make the rat-tail safe for his son, but the toughest saddle-sessions he had ever known, followed in the next ten days. Where the ordinary outlaw left off with sun-fish and rail-fence, the old gray opened fresh spontaneities. One of the last things he did with Bob forked, was to make a quarter-mile sprint toward a low-hanging cottonwood limb, the idea being to rake off his tormentor, which he carried out. Another time when Bob persisted several seconds longer than usual, the rat-tail came out of a buckling snap—to fling himself on the ground. The day came when Bob Leadley, cool-eyed, a smile on his lips, would have preferred to stand up and be shot at, than mount the gray monster again, but that’s what he did, it being his code. That day Rat-tail plunged into a dobe wall and left Bart’s father on the inside of a crowded chicken yard with a broken leg.
‘I should have done what Letchie told me, Bart,’ Bob said that night. ‘He ain’t a man-killer just; he’s a man-eater. You’ll have to leave him alone from now on.’
‘You tried hookin’ him, the way they did over in the Cup Q. It makes him crazy. He ain’t crazy natural, his mouth’s tender. He’s been driven crazy. He needs humorin’, Dad.’
Anger flamed up in the father. He had been a horse-hand all his life. ‘I say keep off him, from now on.’
Three days later Mort Cotton came into the cabin, his bushy eyebrows showing curiously white. ‘I hate to tell on the kid, Bob, but it’ll get to you anyway,’ he said. ‘He’s been riding that rat-tail on a hackamore—he’s ridin’ him now. And what I’m gettin’ at is, he ain’t havin’ trouble.’
Bob’s face turned to the wall. He had many days to think it out while his leg was in boards.... It was disobedience, but had he been right? Didn’t Bart have something on the gray others hadn’t—with other horses, too, perhaps? It wasn’t a matter of just sitting a horse. Bob knew without vanity he could do that as well as most men. It was something new; not to be expressed. He had seen the deformed look of the gray’s head straighten out as Bart drew near; the red flame of the eye die down. Bart had something on him—a new feel with a horse.
‘I belong to the old school,’ he muttered. ‘All we know is that a hoss has to be broke; that a hoss is ruined that once gets his own way. Bart ain’t a part of that. He makes a hoss forget his own way. He gives him his courage back. But it’s disobedience—I dasn’t let Bart get away with it. They’d think I was crazy—if I didn’t get rid of the rat-tail.’
Mort Cotton took the old outlaw back to the Cup Q as a led-horse.