But to-day, Treve could witness the fight with unmarred interest. He did not care, in the very least, whether Pancho should demolish Joel or Joel demolish Pancho. He had no liking for either of them. It was an enthralling spectacle to watch. And no personal feeling was involved.
The horse fought frantically. The man fought back with scientific fury. For ferocity and murderous brutality, he outbattled the beast.
In little more than a minute, Pancho gave up the conflict. Not that he was subdued, but because he found he could not hope to win this particular bout. He stood trembling and non-resisting; while the rider whaled him unmercifully. Then, at a harsh-voiced order, the mustang continued his journey; his mouth dripping blood-flecked foam; his coat a white lather of sweat and weals; his sides scored bloodily by the rowels.
Joel settled himself down into his saddle. Grimly, he was pleased with himself. He had worked off his sour temper, and he had won a victory. The dog, resignedly trotting along beside him, could have told him how far he had come from breaking his foe’s spirit. For Treve could see the pony’s eyes. And a devil was smoldering behind them. Their whites showed unduly. There was a hint of murder in their rolling irises.
Joel Fenno, smugly confident in his own horsemanship and in the victory of man over brute, would have sworn there could not be an atom of fight left in the sweating and trembling victim of his beating. Thus, for the billionth time in history, a man might have profited vastly had he known as much as did his dog.
Two hours went by. And another hour. Then, Fenno began to scan the distance for some shady spot where he might make his noonday halt, for a bite of lunch and ten minutes’ rest.
There was no shade in sight. In fact it was the most shadeless season of a shadeless region in that semi-arid belt of shadeless country.
In Dos Hermanos County, except on the slopes and summits of the Dos Hermanos Peaks, the average yearly rainfall is but twenty-four inches. And more than twenty-one of those twenty-four inches fall between November and April.
Late May had arrived. The level ground—most of it little better than hardpan—was beginning to dry to the consistency of friable clay. The lower foothills were losing the last of their verdure and beginning to assume their summer coat of khaki tan. True, in such lowlands as the Ova, the occasional waterholes, and like receptacles for rainfall, sometimes on wet years kept enough green grass alive to serve as temporary grazing ground for sheep; before the utter drouth of summer sent the sheep men to the government land high in the mountains, with their flocks, in search of grass to carry the livestock through until late autumn. But this was not a wet year.
Joel Fenno saw the arid sweep of ground; broken, perhaps a mile ahead of him, by an irregular ring of yellowish green. Here, by all signs, should be a waterhole. True, no shade was near it. But it might offer a chance to bathe his hot face and wrists in moderately cool water. The increasing heat of the day made this seem more and more desirable.