“But I’m not goin’ on any of the testimony of that case; I’m goin’ on what I have learned since I came here. Blaze Nolan is nothin’ to me. Whether he’s workin’ for Kendall Marsh or not is nothin to me. I’m no detective. But”—and Cultus smiled widely—“I’m goin’ to win me a horse.”
“I haven’t a bit of faith in you, as far as clearin’ Nolan is concerned,” said Jim Kelton seriously “but if you can clear him of all these charges and fix the blame where it belongs, I’ll give you the best horse on the JK ranch.”
“If I keep on, I’ll have me a remuda,” laughed Cultus.
They spend the rest of the evening talking about other things, and it was ten o’clock when Cultus decided to go back to town. The old patio was flooded with moonlight when they went out to the corral. Jane wanted Cultus to select a gentle horse for his ride back to town, but Cultus had taken a liking to the tall sorrel, and insisted on riding him to Medicine Tree.
The animal punched nervously under the pull of the cinch, but Cultus used a heavy bandanna handkerchief for a blindfold, and the sorrel stood quietly after Cultus turned him around, facing the road to town.
“Get him pointed down the road,” laughed Cultus, as he shook hands with all of them. “Give me enough open country and I’ll make a horse out of him.”
He swung carefully into the saddle, settled himself in the stirrups and whipped off the blindfold. For a few moments the tall sorrel stood there, all muscles tensed, quivering.
Then he shot forward into the air, came down in a twisting buck, with his head between his knees, throwing a shower of sand against the patio wall. For several moments there was just a blur of horse and rider in the moonlight, as they bucked out past the ranch-house, and then the sorrel, discouraged in his initial attempt to dislodge this long-legged rider, went racing wildly down the road, while Cultus stood in his stirrups, hat in hand, his mouth open in a soundless cowboy yell.
Not since he had lost Amigo had he felt such a horse between his knees. He swung his hat down across the animal’s rump with a resounding smack, but there was no buck left, only speed. He sank his rowels up along the shoulder, but the animal merely snorted and increased its speed.
“Good boy!” grunted Cultus. “Runnin’ hawse from Painted Valley! Easy, tall feller!”