"Brave?" The proprietor paused as though this had not occurred to him before. "Why, they ain't such a thing as fear in Hal Dunbar, I guess. But if he decides to ride Diablo, he'll ride him, well enough. He has his way about things, Hal Dunbar does."
The sketchy portrait impressed Bull Hunter greatly. "You know him, then?"
"How'd I be mistaking you for him if I knowed him? No, he lives way down south, but they's a pile heard about him that's never seen him."
For some reason the words of his host remained in the mind of Bull as he went down the road that day. Oddly enough, he pictured man and horse as being somewhat alike—Diablo vast and black and fierce, and Hal Dunbar dark and huge and terrible of eye, also; which was proof enough that Bull Hunter was a good deal of a child. He cared less about the world as it was than for the world as it might be, and as long as life gave him something to dream about, he did not care in the least about the facts of existence.
Another man would have been worried about the future; but Bull Hunter went down the road with his swinging stride, perfectly at peace with himself and with life. He had not enough money in his pocket to buy a meal, but he was not thinking so far ahead.
It was still well before noon when he came in sight of the Bridewell place. It varied not a whit from the typical ranch of that region, a low-built collection of sheds and arms sprawling around the ranch house itself. About the building was a far-flung network of corrals. Bull Hunter found his way among them and followed a sound of hammering. He was well among the sheds when a great black stallion shot into view around a nearby corner, tossing his head and mane. He was pursued by a shrill voice crying, "Diablo! Hey! You old fool! Stand still … it's me … it's Tod!"
To the amazement of Bull Hunter, Diablo the Terrible, Diablo the man-killer, paused and reluctantly turned about, shaking his head as though he did not wish to obey but was compelled by the force of conscience. At once a bare-legged boy of ten came in sight, running and shaking his fist angrily at the giant horse. Indeed, it was a tremendous animal. Not the seventeen hands that the hotel proprietor had described to Bull, but a full sixteen three, and so proudly high-headed, so stout-muscled of body, so magnificently long and tapering of leg, that a wiser horseman than the hotelkeeper might have put Diablo down for more than seventeen hands.
Most tall horses are like tall men—they are freakish and malformed in some of their members; but Diablo was as trim as a pony. He had the high withers, the mightily sloped shoulders, and the short back of a weight carrier. And although at first glance his underpinning seemed too frail to bear the great mass of his weight or withstand the effort of his driving power of shoulders and deep, broad thighs, yet a closer reckoning made one aware of the comfortable dimensions of the cannon bone with all that this feature portended. Diablo carried his bulk with the grace which comes of compacted power well in hand.
Not that Bull Hunter analyzed the stallion in any such fashion. He was, literally, ignorant of horseflesh. But in spite of his ignorance the long neck, not overfleshed, suggested length of stride and the mighty girth meant wind beyond exhaustion and told of the great heart within. The points of an ordinary animal may be overlooked, but a great horse speaks for himself in every language and to every man. He was coal-black, this Diablo, except for the white stocking of his off forefoot; he was night-black, and so silken sleek that, as he turned and pranced, flashes of light glimmered from shoulders to flanks.
Bull Hunter stared in amazement that changed to appreciation, and appreciation that burst in one overpowering instant to the full understanding of the beauty of the horse. Joy entered the heart of the big man. He had looked on horses hitherto as pretty pictures perhaps, but useless to him. Here was an animal that could bear him like the wind wherever he would go. Here was a horse who could gallop tirelessly under him all day and labor through the mountains, bearing him as lightly as the cattle ponies bore ordinary men. The cumbersome feeling of his own bulk, which usually weighed heavily on Bull, disappeared. He felt light of heart and light of limb.