In a coulee he jumped a bunch of wild horses. As they broke away and tore up the opposite slope Robin spotted among them the gray cow horse he had left a cripple by Cold Spring. In his own round-up mount one horse had gone sore-footed, another had a cinch sore. Robin could not only use another horse but he foresaw tall riding for Dan Mayne, and the gray would be useful. So he fell in behind the broom tails. He had all night to get back. A few miles more or less didn’t matter.
He was well mounted but he couldn’t quite head the wild bunch. They raced away northwest from the Bar M Bar and toward the Sutherland ranch as if the devil was on their heels. On the plains as well as the sea a stern chase is sometimes a long one. But after half an hour of headlong galloping he drew up on them. Whereupon the long-tailed mares gave up their frantic effort to get out of the country and settled to a docile trot, permitting themselves to be driven at will. Robin promptly hazed them into a wild-horse corral standing lonely in the creek bottom and there roped the gray.
By some kink in his equine make-up the gray had never become properly halter broken. He would not lead as a sensible cow horse should. His progress at a rope’s end was a series of stubborn leg-stiffenings. Robin knew his game. You didn’t lead the gray; you towed him. So Robin saddled him for riding. His other horse would lead at any pace by a grocery cord.
Now the gray had fattened and grown high-spirited with weeks of freedom. Something of the wild always lurked in the cow horse until his heart was broken or his legs grew stiff. Robin knew that for about one minute and a half he would have to ride. The gray was a powerful beast, active, deep-chested, hot-blooded. He would sink his head the moment Robin’s leg crossed his back. Once convinced that he couldn’t buck off his rider he would be gentle as a lamb.
So Robin tied his sweaty horse to a post and turned loose the broom tails. They left for parts unknown in a cloud of dust. The gray, walking stiff-legged, a decided hump in his back, snorting protest against the tight cinch, he led outside.
When Robin topped off a snaky one he liked room; he didn’t like his legs being banged against corral posts. About this corral there lay a flat made to order for bronco busting. It ran level as a lawn for a couple of hundred yards, brown springy turf on which a plunging horse could keep his feet. Robin Tyler could ride any horse that ever lived so long as the brute would stay right side up.
He had no special technique, except to get in the saddle and stay there. He doubled the gray’s head back toward his shoulder, put his foot gently in the stirrup, took firm hold of the horn.
The moment his weight came on horn and stirrup the gray went in the air—and Robin went with him. The leather leg of his chaparejos smacked against the fender on the off side. His boot went home in the stirrup. He whooped once, long and loud, in sheer exultation at the plunge and shock and twist. The gray wasn’t mean. But he could and did pitch high and hard and fast. The whirl of his contortions took him across the flat with little pieces of sod torn loose and flung aside by his hoofs.
Robin rode him straight up as he rode them all. He never admitted it, but he never failed to get a decided thrill out of such a set-to. Not once did the gray show daylight between Robin and his saddle. He held his reins in one hand. With the other he snatched the soft gray Stetson off his head so that the sun made glints on his brown wavy hair while he fanned the gray and taunted him and laughed out loud without quite knowing why he laughed when the horse made his last high, stiff-legged plunge and brought up, breathing hard, rattling the bit in his mouth within a few feet of a clump of quaking aspen that stood on the bank of the creek.
“Go to it, Stormy,” Robin encouraged. “If it amuses you, I don’t mind. If you got any more in your system let’s have it out. Then we’ll go home.”