So he went about with ears laid back, the whites of his eyes showing, and a bite or a kick ready in any emergency. Day by day the hate in him deepened until it became the master-passion. A quick foot-fall behind him was enough to send his heels flying as though they had been released by a hair-trigger. He kicked first and investigated afterward. The mere sight of a man within reaching distance roused all his ferocity.
He took a full course in vicious tricks. He learned how to crowd a man against the side of a stall, and how to reach him, when at his head, by an upward and forward stroke of the forefoot. He could kick straight behind with lightning quickness, or give the hoof a sweeping side-movement most comprehensive and unexpected. The knack of lifting the bits with the tongue and shoving them forward of the bridle-teeth came in time. It made running away a matter of choice.
When it became necessary to cause diversion he would balk. He no longer cared for whips. Physically and mentally he had become hardened to blows. Men he had ceased to fear, for most of them feared him and he knew it. He only despised and hated them. One exception Blue Blazes made. This was in favor of men and boys with red hair and freckles. Such he would not knowingly harm. A long memory had the roan.
Toward his own kind Blue Blazes bore himself defiantly. Double harness was something he loathed. One was not free to work his will on the despised driver if hampered by a pole and mate. In such cases he nipped manes and kicked under the traces until released. He had a special antipathy for gray horses and fought them on the smallest provocation, or upon none at all.
As a result Blue Blazes, while knowing no masters, had many owners, sometimes three in a single week. He began his career by filling a three months' engagement as a livery horse, but after he had run away a dozen times, wrecked several carriages, and disabled a hostler, he was sold for half his purchase price.
Then did he enter upon his wanderings in real earnest. He pulled street-cars, delivery wagons, drays and ash-carts. He was sold to unsuspecting farmers, who, when his evil traits cropped out, swapped him unceremoniously and with ingenious prevarication by the roadside. In the natural course of events he was much punished.
Up and across the southern peninsula of Michigan he drifted contentiously, growing more vicious with each encounter, more daring after each victory. In Muskegon he sent the driver of a grocery wagon to the hospital with a shoulder-bite requiring cauterization and four stitches. In Manistee he broke the small bones in the leg of a baker's large boy. In Cadillac a boarding-stable hostler struck him with an iron shovel. Blue Blazes kicked the hostler quite accurately and very suddenly through a window.
Between Cadillac and Kalaska he spent several lively weeks with farmers. Most of them tried various taming processes. Some escaped with bruises and some suffered serious injury. At Alpena he found an owner who, having read something very convincing in a horse-trainer's book, elaborately strapped the roan's legs according to diagram, and then went into the stall to wreak vengeance with a riding-whip. Blue Blazes accepted one cut, after which he crushed the avenger against the plank partition until three of the man's ribs were broken. The Alpena man was fished from under the roan's hoofs just in time to save his life.
This incident earned Blue Blazes the name of "man-killer," and it stuck. He even figured in the newspaper dispatches. "Blue Blazes, the Michigan Man-Killer," "The Ugliest Horse Alive," "Alpena's Equine Outlaw"; these were some of the head-lines. The Perkins method had borne fruit.
When purchasers for a four-legged hurricane could no longer be found, Blue Blazes was sent up the lake to an obscure little port where they have only a Tuesday and Friday steamer, and where the blue roan's record was unknown. Horses were in demand there. In fact, Blue Blazes was sold almost before he had been led down the gang-plank.