When they had time to turn they saw a sight which, if it had not been so full of peril for a dear old comrade, must have elicited peals of laughter. 'Bust me if you shall lick us,' said Tony, grinding his teeth as he heard the straining thongs begin to give; and when the bull charged the brave old fellow held on to his branding-iron and waited. Of course the flying forms of Tony's companions drew the bull's attention, and his great horned front plunged past the one foe who disdained flight without observing him. With a shattering crash the bull dashed against the corral-fence just too late to pound a man to pieces with his horns, and as he reeled back himself, half stunned by the tremendous collision with those unyielding oaken bars, the bull was aware of a fresh indignity. Tony had him by the tail!!
Yes, it's all very well to plunge and roar with rage, to swing the lithe, active foe clean off his feet, and dash him against the oak rails of your prison, O gallant Texan bull; but that foe, half Yankee as he is now, was bred in gallant Yorkshire, and, once he has his grip, will let go when a bull-dog does, that is, when he is dead; just then and no sooner.
TONY AND THE 'SCRUBBER'
And so the scrub-bull found. In vain he dashed about like a beast possessed, tore up the earth, and rent the air with furious bellowings. Tony had no idea of letting go; his life depended on his holding on; his muscles were like iron, and his nerves were English, hardened by a rough life in America. The absurd part of it was that at every breathing-time Tony made a fresh effort to brand his victim, for he had stuck to his iron with his one hand as tenaciously as to the bull with the other. The story takes long in the telling, but in the doing it did not take half as long. Before anyone could intervene to help the foolhardy old man the end had come. In dashing round the ring in a cloud of dust (no one quite saw how it happened) the old man's head must have struck against the post or against a railing. As the dust cleared, the horrified spectators saw Tony standing in the ring, his head hanging, his eyes vacant, still clinging instinctively to his iron. For a moment the bull paused, almost crouching like a cat, then, with a roar of rage, hurled himself forward. The old man didn't move, didn't seem to understand, and it flashed through the minds of the helpless and horror-stricken spectators that, though still standing, Tony was 'all abroad,' his wits temporarily scattered by collision with the post.
There was a muffled shock: the man was flung, like foam from the crest of a breaker, half across the corral. Three other men's forms were in the ring, a couple of revolver shots rang out, and then, side by side, Tony and the bull lay upon that sandy battlefield, reddened with the life-blood streaming slowly from each. As his companions closed round him Tony managed to struggle to his elbow, saying, with a smile which spoke volumes for his pluck:
'Sorry you killed the scrubber, boys, he'd a been kinder like a monument for me, 'cos you see he has got the Rosebud brand now; you bet, he's got the Rosebud brand——'
Poor Tony! those were his last words, and as his comrades carried him off his last battlefield they felt that the best rough-rider and the gentlest, most kind-hearted giant amongst them had done his last day's work.
A few days later, when the sun was setting on the prairie, making the whole sky crimson, and flooding the world with its last rays of light, they buried him by the river's edge, Nares reading the funeral service over him, who, though perhaps he had said less of religion than most men, had lived a life so close to Nature, and face to face with God and His works, that he must have learnt the great secret and loved the Creator, as he undoubtedly in his own rough way loved all His beautiful creation. Over Tony's grave the men set up a rough headstone, or cross, rather, of timber, and on it they nailed the bleached skull and bones of his dead enemy; while underneath Snap burned with a hot iron some words which he remembered from Bret Harte:—