By the time Al had reached behind him with one hand to fumble for the rifle, the band had swept by and was disappearing. Probably there were thirty horses in it, but that was only a guess, because Dave obtained nothing more than a glimpse of streaming manes and tails. They ran compactly, a noble buckskin in the lead, and tailing the band was a white horse; it was evident that he held the furious pace only by a supreme effort.
“There goes ol’ Pete. Blast him, if he ain’t hitting only the high spots,” Dave bawled.
At this moment his attention was called to Sam. The mule’s head was thrown high, the usually slouching ears were rigid and pricked forward, and he was sniffing the air restlessly. Once he made an abrupt lurch sideways as though to follow the free rovers, but the bit sawed his mouth, the collar and traces bound him and he could only champ impatiently. If a mule really knows how to tremble, Sam was trembling then--it was more a twitching of the muscles. The band was lost to sight and sound. Dave called a raucous command and once more they settled to work. Again Sam became listless and applied himself lethargically to pulling.
A cool breeze whipped among the scrub-cedar of the foothills and went whining down the valley. Above the black rim of El Toro rose a rich, golden disc. Its pale light softened the outlines of the forms asleep upon the ground; in that kindly radiance the chuck-wagon and the unsightly confusion of camp merged into blurs that harmonized with the giant shadow of the mountain. The night was full of murmurings, tense with the suggestion of strange other worlds. Surely the plaintive wailing the breeze bore to Sam from El Toro’s pines was a message.
He stood with his nose up wind and drew in the scents of the wilds. His forelegs were hobbled, the rope twisted about them so tightly that he could barely shuffle when he grazed, and near at hand twelve horses were staked out. One of them, hopelessly entangled in his rope, was fighting it in terror; already he was on his knees unable to do aught but cut himself. In a draw a half-mile away the remuda cropped the grass under the eyes of a triple guard, for Uncle Henry was mindful of the manager’s warning, and upon Dave’s report he took no chances.
Out from the shadow cast by a mesquite bush a coyote skulked, and Sam snorted and shook his head in anger. The beast’s scent offended him, but he was not afraid. Somewhere in the dark a wildcat cried and the mule cocked his ears to listen. Next moment he jumped awkwardly aside as a polecat scurried by on a hunt for food.
The mule was growing restive. It was not nervousness--a mule is rarely nervous or frightened. When he runs away or pitches or balks, it is seldom because something has put fear into him; it is refined cussedness. Anyone who ever succeeded in owning a mule longer than a month will tell you that.
Of a sudden Sam sank his head and his powerful teeth met and rasped on the rope that chafed his legs. One of the strands parted and he strained to break the hobble, but too impatient to direct his gnawing to one spot, he was unsuccessful and finally desisted.
Was that the call of a horse? It did not come from the direction in which the remuda had been driven off, and his ears tingled for a repetition of the sound. Twice he humped himself and struck out with his heels in the fury of impotence, and paused breathlessly with his eyes fixed on the yellow ball above El Toro’s summit. He took one step forward and became immovable as his glance fell to the wide lane of light it cast.
Down this silver-shimmering path a horse came proudly. None but a free rover ever trod earth as he did. Sam could see the fiery eyes flashing suspicion, the regal head thrown back, the nostrils a-quiver to divine danger. He came like a phantom, lightly as one, silently as one, and a dozen yards away he halted, and there in the light of the moon surveyed the camp, the staked mounts, the sleeping men. It was the king of the wild horses. Far back of him a blotch on a hillside shifted with gleam of color.