He went out the back door of the hotel so that few people might mark his leaving, and cut for the woods. Once in them, he changed his direction to the east, heading for the lower, rolling hills in that direction. He turned back when the lights of the town had drawn into one small, glimmering ray. Then this, too, went out, and with it the pain of leaving Pete Reeve became acute. He felt lost and alone, that keen mind had guided him so long. As he stalked along with the great swinging strides through the darkness, the holster rubbed on his thigh and he remembered Pete. Truly he had come into the hands of Pete Reeve a child, and he was leaving him as a man.
The dawn found him forty miles away and still swinging strongly down the winding road. It was better country now. The desert sand had disappeared, and here the soil supported a good growth of grass that would fatten the cattle. It was a cheerful country in more ways than the greenness of the grass, however. There were no high mountains, but a continual smooth rolling of hills, so that the landscape varied with every half-mile he traveled. And every now and then he had to jump a runlet of water that murmured across his trail.
A pleasant country, a clear sky, and a cool wind touching at his face. The contentment of Bull Hunter increased with every step he took. He had diminished the sharpness of his hunger by taking up a few links of his belt, but he was glad when he saw smoke twisting over a hill and came, on the other side, in view of a crossroads village. He fingered the few pieces of silver in his pocket. That would be enough for breakfast, at least.
It was enough; barely that and no more, for the long walk had made him ravenous, and the keenness of his spirits served to put a razor edge on an appetite which was already sharp. He began eating before the regular breakfast at the little hotel was ready. He ate while the other men were present. He was still eating when they left.
"How much?" he said when he was done.
His host scratched his head.
"I figure three times a regular meal ought to be about it," he said. "Even then it don't cover everything; but matter of fact, I'm ashamed to charge any more."
His ruefulness changed to a grin when he had the money in his hand, and Bull Hunter rose from the table.
"But you got something to feed, son," he said. "You certainly got something to feed. And--is what the boys are saying right?"
It came to Bull that while he sat at the table there had been many curious glances directed toward him, and a humming whisper had passed around the table more than once. But he was accustomed to these side glances and murmurs, and he had paid no attention. Besides, food had been before him.
"I don't know. What do they say?"
"That you're Dunbar from the South--Hal Dunbar."
"That's not my name," said Bull. "My name is Hunter."
"I guess they were wrong," said the other. "Trouble is, every time anybody sees a big man they say, 'There goes Hal Dunbar.' But you're too big even to be Dunbar I reckon."
He surveyed the bulk of Bull Hunter with admiring respect. This personal survey embarrassed the big man. He would have withdrawn, but his host followed with his conversation.
"We know Dunbar is coming up this way, though. He sent the word on up that he's going to come to ride Diablo. I guess you've heard about Diablo?"
Bull averred that he had not, and his eyes went restlessly down the road. It wove in long curves, delightfully white with the bordering of green on either side. He could see it almost tossing among the far-off hills. Now was the time of all times for walking, and if Pete Reeve started to trail him this morning, he would need to put as much distance behind him by night as his long legs could cover. But still the hotel proprietor hung beside him. He wanted to make the big man talk. It was possible that there might be in him a story as big as his body.
"So you ain't heard of Diablo? Devil is the right name for him. Black as night and meaner'n a mountain lion. That's Diablo. He's big enough and strong enough to carry even you. Account of him being so strong, that's why Dunbar wants him."
"Big enough and strong enough to carry me?" repeated Bull Hunter.
He had had unfortunate experiences trying to ride horses. His weight crushed down their quarters and made them walk with braced legs. To be sure, that was up in the high mountains where the horses were little more than ponies.
"Yep. Big enough. He's kind of a freak hoss, you see. Runs to almost seventeen hands, I've heard tell, though I ain't seen him. He's over to the Bridewell place yonder in the hills--along about fifteen miles by the road, I figure. He run till he was three without ever being taken up, and he got wild as a mustang. They never was good on managing on the Bridewell place, you see? And then when they tried to break him he started doing some breaking on his own account. They say he can jump about halfway to the sky and come down stiff-legged in a way that snaps your neck near off. I seen young Huniker along about a month after he tried to ride Diablo. Huniker was a pretty good rider, by all accounts, but he was sure a sick gent around hosses after Diablo got through with him. Scared of a ten-year-old mare, Huniker was, after Diablo finished with him. Scott Porter tried him, too. That was a fight! Lasted close onto an hour, they say, nip and tuck all the way. Diablo wasn't bucking all the time. No, he ain't that way. He waits in between spells till he's thought up something new to do. And he's always thinking, they say. But if he wasn't so mean he'd be a wonderful hoss. Got a stride as long as from here to that shed, they say."
He rambled on with a growing enthusiasm.
"And think of a hoss like that being given away!"
"Given away?" said Bull with a sudden interest.
And then he remembered that horses were outside of his education entirely.
He listened with gloomy attention while his host went on. "Yes, sir. Given away is what I said and given away is what I mean. Old Chick Bridewell has kept him long enough, he says. He's tired of paying buckaroos for getting busted up trying to ride that hoss. Man-eater, that's what he calls Diablo, and he wants to give the hoss away to the first man that can ride him. Hal Dunbar heard about it and sent up word that he was coming up to ride him."
"He must be a brave man," said Bull innocently. He had an immense capacity for admiring others.
"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."
"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.
In the meantime the bare-legged boy had come to the side of the big horse, still shrilling his anger. He stood under the lofty head of the stallion and shook his small fist into the face of Diablo the Terrible. And while Bull, quaking, expected to see the head torn from the shoulders of the child, Diablo pointed his ears and sniffed the fist of the boy inquisitively.
In fact, this could not be the horse of which the hotelkeeper had told him, or perhaps he had been recently tamed and broken?
That, for some reason, made the heart of Bull Hunter sink.
The boy now reached up and twisted his fingers into the mane of the black.
"Come along now. And if you pull away ag'in, you old fool, Diablo, I'll give you a thumping, I tell you. Git along!"
Diablo meekly lowered his head and made his step mincing to regulate his gait to that of his tiny master. He was brought alongside a rail fence. There he waited patiently while the boy climbed up to the top rail and then slid onto his back. Again Bull Hunter caught his breath. He expected to see the stallion leap into the air and snap the child high above his head with a single arching of his back, but there was no such violent reaction. Diablo, indeed, turned his head with his ears flattened and bared his teeth, but it was only to snort at the knee of the boy. Plainly he was bluffing, if horses ever bluffed. The boy carelessly dug his brown toes into the cheek of the great horse and shoved his head about.
"Giddap," he called. "Git along, Diablo!"
Diablo walked gently forward.
"Hurry up! I ain't got all day!" And the boy thumped the giant with his bare heels.
Diablo broke into a trot as soft, as smooth flowing, as water passing over a smooth bed of sand. Bull ran to the corner of the shed and gaped after them until the pair slid around a corner and were gone. Instinctively he drew off his hat and gaped.
He was startled back to himself by loud laughter nearby, and, looking up, he saw an old fellow in overalls with a handful of nails and a hammer. He stood among a scattering of uprights which represented, apparently, the beginnings of the skeleton of a barn. Now he leaned against one of these uprights and indulged his mirth. Bull regarded him mildly; he was used to being laughed at.
