The explanation sounded plausible. Mullins was listening with a faintly amused smile to Reb’s account of what a lady mule had done to him; he rolled a cigarette and lighted it painstakingly. The hands that held the match were steady as eternal rock. It was maddening to see him stand there so coolly while the big sorrel, a dozen feet distant, was a-quake with dread, blowing harshly through his crimson nostrils whenever a cowboy stirred--and each of us knowing that the man was taking his life in his hands. An unlooked-for twist, a trifling disturbance of poise, and, with a horse like Corazón, it meant maiming or death. At last he threw the cigarette from him and walked slowly to the rope.
“So you’re calling for me?” he inquired, gathering it up.
Corazón was snorting. By patient craft Reb acquired a grip on the sorrel’s ears, and, while he hung there, bringing the head down so that the horse could not move, Mullins tested the stirrups and raised himself cautiously into the saddle.
“Let him go.”
While one could count ten, Corazón stood expectant, his back bowed, his tail between his legs. The ears were laid flat on the head and the forefeet well advanced. The buster waited, the quirt hanging from two fingers of his right hand. Suddenly the sorrel ducked his head and emitted a harsh scream, leaping, with legs stiff, straight off the ground. He came down with the massive hips at an angle to the shoulders, thereby imparting a double shock; bounded high again, turned back with bewildering speed as he touched the earth; and then, in a circle perhaps twenty feet in diameter, sprang time after time, his heels lashing the air. Never had such pitching been seen on the Anvil Range.
“I swan, he just misses his tail a’ inch when he turns back!” roared a puncher.
Mullins sat composedly in the saddle, but he was riding as never before. He whipped the sorrel at every jump and raked him down the body from shoulder to loins with the ripping spurs. The brute gave no signs of letting up. Through Mullins’ tan of copper hue showed a slight pallor. He was exhausted. If Corazón did not give in soon, the man would be beaten. Just then the horse stopped, feet a-sprawl.
“Mullins,”--the range boss got down from the fence,--“you’ll kill that hoss. Between the cinches belongs to you; the head and hind quarters is the company’s.”
For a long minute Mullins stared at the beast’s ears without replying.
“I reckon that’s the rule,” he acquiesced heavily. “Do you want that somebody else should ride him?”