Two days later Manuel Salazar brought in Greer’s horse, shockingly gaunt and worried, and swelled as to the head. But what interested the outfit, when the saddle and bridle had been removed from Hardtimes, were long, parallel wales along neck and flank. Archie pronounced them to be the marks of a horse’s teeth.
“That don’t show anything. He wandered off and got into a fight with another horse,” Floyd asserted. “Yes, sir; it’s like that he done just that.”
After which he dismissed the unfortunate Greer from his mind. The outfit shook its head and expressed sorrow for the lonely digger, but opined that his fate surely went to show how injurious steady application to tequila could be, more especially in cruel weather. The Mexicans, and the nesters in outlying parts, were not satisfied with the explanation put forward. They discussed the mystery during protracted pauses in work and in the dark of the night. When two men met on a trail and halted to pass the time of day, old man Greer was the subject of talk. There were rumors of a snug fortune the digger had amassed and buried--sixty-six thousand dollars in gold, it was. Joe Toole, who made a nice, comfortable living by systematic theft of calves from the cattle company, did not hesitate to hint that Greer had died a victim to its professional gun-fighter for reasons best known to the rich corporation; but, then, Joe was prejudiced. Soon the death grew to a murder, and no man not of white blood would ride the Zacaton Bottom after nightfall.
Tommy Floyd talked of these and other matters to his father as the boss was feeding Apache.
“Pshaw!” Floyd said contemptuously. “Don’t you put no stock in them stories, Tommy, boy. Some people in this here country can smell a skunk when they sight a dead tree.”
“But what do you guess killed him, Dad?”
“I don’t know, son. I sure wish I did,” was the troubled reply.
He punched Apache in the ribs to make him move over. The huge jack laid back his ears and his tail whisked threateningly, but he gave place with an awkward flop, and Floyd laughed. Others might fear Apache, but he knew there was not the least particle of viciousness lurking in that hammerlike head. Of all the ranch possessions--blooded horses, thoroughbred Herefords and cowponies--he liked the jack best. It pandered to his vanity that others should avoid the monster, or approach him in diffidence, with suspicion and anxiety; and, in truth, Apache’s appearance was sufficiently appalling. Great as was his blue-gray bulk, it was dwarfed by the ponderous head; his knees were large and bulbous, and when he opened his mouth to bray, laying bare the powerful teeth, Apache was a spectacle to scare the intrepid. Horses would run at sight of him; an entire pasture would squeal with fear and flee on his approach. Yet there was not a gentler animal to handle in the million acres of the company’s range.
Toward the fag-end of a day Tommy was eating panocha on the steps of the porch, a favorite diversion with him. While removing some particles thereof from his cheek, in the region of his ear, he espied his father riding homeward from the Zacaton Bottom. Something in the way the boss swayed in the saddle brought Tommy’s head up alertly. Floyd was clinging to the horn and the reins trailed on the ground. The boy threw his crust away and ran to meet him. A dozen yards from the house the horse stopped, as though he knew that the end of the journey had come for his master.
“That black devil, Tommy!” his father gasped, and lurched outward and to the ground.