“Diablo!” Jack heard Ramon shrill out as the Border Boy gave one quick leap into the dense woods.
When Ramon looked around there was not a trace of the lad he had had at the end of his lariat. Instead, a broken end of the rope dangled on the ground, its ends frayed out.
“Maledictions!” he yelled, all the fury of his Latin blood boiling to the surface in an ungovernable flood. “That cursed gringo pup has fooled me once more.”
In one of those meaningless frenzies of rage into which his countrymen are apt to fall when thwarted in anything, Ramon began to vent his rage on the first animate object to hand. This was the black horse. On the beautiful creature’s shiny coat the cruel blows of the Mexican’s lariat fell furiously, raising great welts across the glossy surface.
For an instant the black quivered and stood motionless. The suddenness of the attack dazed it. But the next moment, its rage,—as ungoverned as that of its master, surged up in its equine heart. With an angry squeal it gave a succession of huge bucks which would have unseated any ordinary—or extraordinary rider,—but which did not even disturb the Mexican’s seat.
Then followed a magnificent exhibition of man versus horse. And it was not without its watchers—this Homeric struggle for supremacy between maddened man and maddened beast.
Jack, from his hiding place in the ferns and brush, heard the sounds and almost unconsciously he drew closer to the scene of the combat. Parting the ferns he peered through cautiously, and then was held spellbound.
If he were to have been captured for it the next instant he could not have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle.
With clenched teeth and face that was yellow and drawn with rage, Ramon plied quirt and spur. The big rowelled instruments he wore tore great streaks in the black’s glossy hide. All the time his quirt fell in a perfect hailstorm of blows about the noble animal’s flanks.
But if Ramon’s rage was impressive from its very vindictiveness, how much more so was the just anger of the big horse.