Bred of the Desert - Charles Marcus Horton (best short novels .TXT) 📗

arm that constantly distressed him, was reclining upon a blanket, staring into the flames and conjuring up in their leaping tongues numerous soothing pictures. As he sat there the man with the beard suddenly addressed him.

“Doc,” he drawled, removing his pipe from between whiskers that glinted in the light of the fire, “now that you’ve got him, what are you thinking of doing with that horse?”

“I’ll take him back,” replied Stephen, pleasantly.

The other was silent. “Shore!” he rejoined, after a moment. “But take him back where?”

“Where he belongs.”

There was further silence. “Excuse me!” finally exclaimed the other. “I was thinking as mebbe you’d take him whence he came.”

Stephen sat erect and looked at the other. He was smoking again complacently.

“Whence come you?” asked Stephen, after a time.

The other slowly removed his pipe. Then he told him. Then Stephen spoke. And then the man rose stiffly, crossed solemnly to him and shook hands with him cordially.

“I knowed you was white the fust day I see you,” he declared. Then he waved a vague hand over the others. “They’ve all–all of ’em–traveled that way. I was raised–”

A sudden shrill scream out in the darkness interrupted him. It was a horse. The cry stirred the entire camp. The Professor arose, sauntered out, whistling, whirled, and called back sharply. The others ran toward him; the large man struck a match. The white horse was limping on three legs. They bent over and examined the fourth. The match went out. All straightened up. As they did so Pat sounded a shrill nicker.

“Busted!” exclaimed the large man, quietly. “Well, I’m a goat! That black horse has kicked old Tom clear over the divide. I–I’m clean done! Quick as lightning, too! No preambles; no circumlocutions; no nothing. Just put it to him. Good Lord!” Then he regretfully drew a revolver. “I reckon you boys better stand back.”

A shot broke the quiet, and the desert shivered and was still again. The white horse sank to the ground. Stephen walked to Pat, struck a match, and looked him over critically. Pat was torn and bleeding in two places along the neck, but otherwise he needed no attention. Stephen patted him thoughtfully, gratefully, fighting the horror of what might have been had this splendid horse weakened in the crisis. No wonder the little girl in the valley worshiped him.

But he said nothing. After a time he returned to the fire and sat down among a very sober group of men. Presently the man with the scrubby beard broke the quiet. His voice sounded hollow and distressed.

“I knowed it,” he declared. “Though I thought old Tom ’u’d done better.” He began to roll a cigarette. “Pore old Tom! He’s killed; he’s dead–dead and gone.” With the cigarette made, he snatched a brand from the fire and lighted it. He fell to smoking in thoughtful silence, in his eyes a look of unutterable sadness.

The Professor bestirred himself. “Tell me,” he asked, lifting his gaze to the heavens reflectively–“tell me, does any of you believe that horses–any animiles–has souls?”

The lean man glanced at him. His eyes now had the look of one anxious to express his views, but cautiously refused to be baited. Finally he made answer.

“If you’re askin’ my opinion,” he said, “I’ll tell you that I know they have.” He was silent. “I know that animals has the same thing we’ve got,” he continued–“that thing we call the soul–but they’ve got it in smaller proportions, so to speak. It’s easy as falling off a bucking bronc. Take old Tom out there. Take that Lady horse that got killed two years ago by rustlers–take any horse, any dumb animal–and I’ll show you in fifteen different ways that they’ve got souls.”

“How?”

The lean man glared. “Now ‘how’!” he snapped. “You give me a mortal pang. Why don’t you never use your eyes once like other and more decent folks? Get the habit. You’ll see there ain’t any difference between animals and humans, only speech, and they’ve got that!”

The large man smiled. “Let’s have it, Bob,” he invited. “Where’ll we look for it first?”

The lean man showed an impatience born of contempt. “Well,” he began, tossing away his cigarette, “in desires, first, then in their power to appreciate, and, finally, in their sense of the worth of things. They have that, and don’t you think they hain’t. But they’ve got the others, too. Animals like to eat and drink and play, don’t they? You know that! And they understand when you’re good to ’em and when you’re cussed mean. You know that. And they know death when they see it, take it from me, because they’re as sensitive to loss of motion, or breathing, or animal heat, as us humans–more so. They feel pain, for instance, more’n we do, because, lackin’ one of the five–or six, if you like–senses, their other senses is keyed up higher’n our’n.”

The Professor looked belligerent. “Get particular!” he demanded.

“I won’t get particular,” snapped the other. “S’pose you wrastle it out for yourself–same as us humans.” Evidently he was still bitter against this man. “That Lady horse o’ mine,” he went on, his eyes twinkling, addressing himself to the others, “she had it all sized about right. She used to say to me, when I’d come close to her in the morning: ‘Well, old sock,’ she’d say, throwin’ her old ears forward, ‘how are you this mornin’?–You know,’ she’d declare, ‘I kind o’ like you because you understand me.’ Then she’d about wipe her nose on me and go on. ‘Wonder why it is that so many of you don’t! It’s easy enough, our language,’ she’d p’int out, ‘but most o’ you two-legged critters don’t seem to get us. It’s right funny! You appear to get ’most everything else–houses, and land, and playin’-cards, and sich. But you don’t never seem to get us–that is, most o’ you! Why, ’tain’t nothin’ but sign language, neither–same as Injuns talkin’ to whites. But I reckon you’re idiots, most o’ you, and blind, you hairless animals, wearin’ stuff stole offen sheep, and your ugly white faces mostly smooth. You got the idee we don’t know nothin’–pity us, I s’pose, because we can’t understand you. Lawzee! We understand you, all right. It’s you ’at don’t understand us. And that’s the hull trouble. You think we’re just a lump o’ common dirt, with a little tincture o’ movement added, just enough so as we can run and drag your loads around for you. Wisht you could ’a’ heard me and old Tom last night, after you’d all turned in, talkin’ on the subject o’ keepin’ well and strong and serene o’ mind. Sign language? Some. But what of it, old whiskers? Don’t every deef-and-dumb party get along with few sounds and plenty of signs? You humans give me mortal distress!’

“And so on,” concluded this lover of animals. “Thus Lady horse used to talk to me every mornin’, tryin’ to make me see things some little clearer. And that’s all animals–if you happen to know the ‘try me’ on their little old middle chamber work.” He fell silent.

The others said nothing. Each sat smoking reflectively, gazing into the dying flames, until one arose and prepared to turn in. Stephen was the last except the Professor and the man with the scrubby beard. And finally the Professor gained his feet and, with a glance at the last figure remaining at the fire, took off his boots and rolled up in his blanket. For a long moment he stared curiously at the other bowed in thought.

“Ain’t you goin’ to turn in?” he finally inquired. “You ain’t et up by nothin’, be you?”

The lean man slowly lifted his head. “I was thinkin’,” he said, half to himself, “of a–a kind of horse’s prayer I once see in a harness-shop in Albuquerque.”

The other twisted himself under his blanket. “How did it go?” he asked, encouragingly. “Let’s all have it!”

The lean man arose. “‘To thee, my master,’ it started off,” he began, moving slowly toward his blanket. Suddenly he paused. “I–I don’t just seem to remember it all,” he said, and sat down and pulled off one of his boots. He held it in his hands absently.

The Professor urged him on. “Let her come,” he said, his face now hidden in the folds of his covering. “Shoot it–let’s hear.”

“‘To thee, my master, I offer my prayer,’” presently continued the other, turning reflective eyes toward the flickering coals. “‘Feed me, water me, care for me, and, when the–the day’s work is done, provide me with shelter and a clean, dry bed, and, when you can, a stall wide enough for me to lie down in in comfort. Always be kind to me. Talk to me–your voice often means as much to me as the reins. Pet me sometimes, that I may serve you the more gladly and know that my services are appreciated, and that I may learn to love you. Do not jerk the reins, and do not whip me when going up-hill. And when I don’t understand you, what you want, do not strike or beat or kick me, but give me a chance to understand you. And if I continue to fail to understand, see if something is not wrong with my harness or feet.’”

The Professor’s blanket stirred. “Go on!” he yelled. “Sounds all right. Go ahead! Is that all?”

“I disremember the rest,” replied the other. “Let’s see!” He was silent. “No,” he finally blurted out, “I can’t get it. It says something about overloading, and a-hitching where water don’t drop on him, and–Oh yes! ‘I can’t tell you when I’m thirsty,’ it goes on, ‘so give me cool, clean water often. Never put a frosty bit in my mouth; first warm it by holdin’ it a moment in your hands. And, remember, I try to carry you and your burdens without a murmur, and I wait patiently for you long hours of the day and night. Without power to choose my shoes or path, I sometimes stumble and fall, but I stand always in readiness at any moment to lose my life in your service. And this is important, and, finally, O my master! when my useful strength is gone do not turn me out to starve, or sell me to some cruel owner to be slowly tortured and starved to death; but do thou, my master, take my life in the kindest way, and your God will reward you here and hereafter. You will not consider me irreverent, I know, if I ask all this in the name of Him Who was born in a stable.’”

The Professor’s blanket stirred again. “Go on,” he demanded in muffled tones. “Is that all?”

The lean man slipped off his second boot. “No,” he replied, quietly, “that ain’t all.”

“Well, go ahead. It’s good. That horse must ’a’ been a city horse; but go on!”

“Only one more word, anyway,” was the rejoinder. He was still holding his boot.

“What is it?”

“Why”–the voice was solemn–“it’s ‘Amen.’”

“Aw, shucks!” came from the depths of the blanket.

The lean man turned his head. “Say, you!” he rasped, belligerently.

“What?”

For answer the boot sailed across the camp.

The Professor popped his head out of the blanket, drew it back suddenly, popped it out again, all strongly suggestive of a turtle.

There was a hoarse laugh, then silence, but none of those men forgot the Prayer of the Horse.

CHAPTER XIX
ANOTHER CHANGE OF MASTERS

The next morning Pat had a change from the tedium of the desert. With the others he struck into a narrow canyon that led out to a beaten trail upon a rolling mesa. The trail wound diagonally across the mesa from the south and lost itself in snake-like twistings among hills to the north. Guided to the right into this trail, Pat found himself, a