Rebel Spurs by Andre Norton (fun books to read for adults txt) 📗
- Author: Andre Norton
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"Teodoro," Rennie called, "get back there and see if you can quiet those horses."
Drew reached for the carbine he had taken from the boot on the saddle of the captured bay. Army issue ... Spencer. He appraised it with the sharp, quick scrutiny of a man who had had to depend on enemy weapons before. Just how had this fallen into outlaw hands? The arm was well kept, ready for action.
Horses turned mean, turned man-killer at times. And the Pinto was reputed to be a murderer of his own species. Not just content to protect his band from a raiding stallion, he actually went out of his way to seek and force a fight with other males. Could it be that now the wild killer had been drawn from hiding to meet a strange stallion?
And could that stranger be Shiloh? It would mean the men they sought were circling back to this water hole. Shiloh and the Pinto! Even when saddled and ridden, the Kentucky stallion might respond to the challenge. And so[pg 196] handicapped he would have no chance! Drew bit hard on his underlip.
The yap-yap of a coyote sounded brazenly from the ridge behind which Drew was almost certain the Pinto had trumpeted.
"Pass the word," said Rennie. "Riders coming."
Anse hissed it on to Donally, who hid in the brush behind. Drew lay tense, as if his whole body was able to listen and assess sounds.
Waiting, as always, fretted the nerves. Imagination gave birth to sounds, made the quiver of a bush unnatural, planted in a man a growing sense of eyes boring down on his body, nakedly visible to the enemy. Drew's muscles ached. He forced tight rein on his imagination and began the hard task of consciously schooling himself past the danger of a freeze when and if attack did come.
Wind moaning about the rocks, sand blown in eyes and face. Twice Drew half put out his hand to the canteen which lay between him and Anse. Both times he did not complete the reach. His tongue felt swollen, the saliva in his mouth sticky, sickly tasting.
No sun—this was going to be a cloudy, overcast day.
He half arose. That scream came again, this time closer, more rage-filled. Drew turned his head.
"Cover me!" He did not give Anse a chance to protest.
That slope ... he had been studying it carefully for long moments of the wait, gauging the distances between bits of cover, the tricky open spaces he would have to cross. But the riders they had been alerted to expect were not in sight, and if what he truly believed was about to happen did, the outlaws might never reach the water hole at all.
He was running, dodging, working his way up to the[pg 197] crown of the ridge. But he was still too low to see what was going on at the far side when that scream of challenge was answered. The answer was deeper in tone, but it carried with it the same rising note of anger and fighting promise. Although Drew had never seen Shiloh prepare to give battle, he was sure he had just heard him voice such readiness.
The Kentuckian flung himself flat before he reached the skyline, wriggling on in a desperate crawl. Then he lay panting in a small earth dip, only a ragged fringe of grass between him and the down slope.
Even in the swirl of wind-blown dust there was no mistaking Shiloh—rearing and fighting to dislodge his rider, wheeling about in a circle. Three other horses and their riders had edged well beyond the circumference of that circle, the horses neighing and snorting.
The squeal of the Pinto was ear-wrenching, though as yet the killer stud had not appeared in plain sight. The cry triggered Shiloh into a fantastic effort. He reared, striking out with front hoofs, perhaps in an effort to keep his balance. Drew fully expected to see him crash over and back.
Apparently his rider feared the same fall. In the dusty murk the man separated from the horse. Shiloh whirled and pounded back, away from his rider, and as he went he voiced once more his answer to the Pinto.
Drew sighted a dark spot moving in to intercept the gray. Then the spot turned broadside and he appreciated what had made the Pinto so elusive to hunters. The mottled red-and-white patches of the wild stud's coat melted into the landscape in an uncanny fashion, making the horse seem to appear and disappear as he trotted back and forth.
The Kentuckian tried to bring the Spencer in line with that weaving, distorted barrel of spotted body. What was[pg 198] the range? Too far, he was afraid, for a shot to count. But he knew that he could not lie there and watch the Pinto cut down Shiloh in one of those vicious, deadly, equine duels. The Kentucky horse had no fighting experience, and his greater bulk and height would mean little against the wily cunning of the murderer who had already tasted blood too many times. To allow Shiloh to be ripped to pieces was utterly unthinkable.
The men down there no longer mattered. Drew rose to one knee, steadied the carbine, and fired.
Did the Pinto really flinch from a bullet striking home? Or had the dangerous sound of gunfire caused his old caution to win out for an instant over his blood lust? The red head with the dangling white forelock tossed, and then the wild horse whirled and ran. Shiloh, teeth bared, ready and willing to come to battle, followed....
Drew was on his feet. Then he was pulled backward by a jerk out of nowhere, and he fell under a brown, mostly bare body which pinned him firmly to the ground.
Drew struggled wildly but he could not break the grip which held him down. He was looking up into the face of Greyfeather, and none of his writhing made any impression on the Pima's hold. There was a sprinkle of shots; then a whirl of the wind brought sand up over them, blinding eyes, filling mouth and nose. Even the Indian flinched from that and Drew managed to tear loose. He rolled down the grade, bringing up against a small tree with a jolt which drove most of the air from his laboring lungs.
He pulled his arm up across his face, trying to shield his eyes from the blast which thickened steadily, gasping for air to breathe. And the wind voiced a howl which arose as alarmingly as the stallions' screaming.
Stallions! Drew clawed his way up to his knees. But there was no seeing through that murk to where Shiloh had been. Then he was on his feet, stumbling along ... the big gray must be hidden somewhere....
"Drew!" A figure blundered into him from behind, almost sending him to the ground again. "Get down, you fool!" Hands clutched at his body, trying to pull him earthward.[pg 200]
"Let me go! Shiloh—"
"Get down!" Anse's whole weight struck him, and he fell, the Texan sprawling with him. It was only then that he heard the spatter of rifle fire and understood that they were in the middle of an exchange of lead slugs.
"Keep down!" Anse, his voice ragged with anger, snapped the command in Drew's ear. "What in thunder you tryin' to do? You gone completely loco, amigo? Walkin' right out to git yourself shot like them bullets was nothin' but pecans or somethin' like!"
For the first time Drew realized what he had done—blown Rennie's carefully planned trap sky-high. His shot at the Pinto must have been warning enough for the fugitives. But why were they trying to make a fight of it now, when to cut and run would have been the smartest move? Unless, having seen only one man, they believed he was alone. He tried to rub the dust from his eyes and think coherently. But all that was in the forefront of his mind was that last sight of Shiloh following the Pinto to battle.
"All right." Drew shifted in Anse's hold. "It's all right."
Not that it was, but at least that was the best way he could express his return to reason. And the Texan appeared to understand, for his grip loosened.
The dust which had blown up an opaque curtain dropped as quickly. They lay together on the far side of the ridge, but the space below was empty. They saw no men, no battling horses—nothing.
"They've hightailed it," someone called from the crest of the ridge.
"I tell you ... I got one of 'em.... He's over between those two bushes. He'd pulled up to take up th' fella runnin'[pg 201] an' went out of th' saddle. Other man got his hoss an' lit out."
Drew stood up.
"Where you goin' now?" Anse demanded.
"Where d' you think?" the Kentuckian asked dully. "After Shiloh."
He went on foot, down the slope, across the open where the gray had unseated his rider and turned to take up the Pinto's challenge. Since the horses were no longer in sight, there was only one way they could have gone—to the east.
Drew was in the open when another of those wild sand and dust flurries caught him. Buffeted here and there, staggering, his arm up over his face, he was driven by its force until he brought up against a rock wall. With that as a guide he kept on stubbornly, because once more he had heard the scream of the Pinto. In triumph? Drew shivered under a thrust of fear which left him sick. He was sure that that murderous red-and-white devil had finished off Shiloh.
Along the wall ... keep going.... The dust was thinning again. Drew's hand was on the Colt Topham had supplied. The Spencer lay back on the ridge. But if any kind of fortune favored him now, he was going to shoot the Pinto—if it was the last thing he ever did.
There was a clear space ahead once more. The sullen gray sky gave only dulled light, but enough to see by.
Drew had heard many stories of the fury of the stallion battle, and he had seen fearsome scars ridging the hides of two of the Range studs. But actually witnessing such a battle shook him. Teeth ... hoofs ... blood on Shiloh's shoulders and flanks ... a strip of flesh dangling.... But Drew saw that the Pinto was marked, too.
The wild horse was trying for a final throat grip, and[pg 202]
Shiloh was on the defensive, running, wheeling to kick, once getting home on the Pinto's ribs so that the spotted horse squealed with pain. Shiloh had a torn ear and a gash open on his neck. The two battlers twisted and turned in a mad fury of movement.
Drew edged on, Colt ready. But to fire now was impossible.
The Pinto's hoofs crashed against the saddle and Shiloh gave ground. With a scream of triumph the wild one's head snaked out, teeth ready to set on the larger horse's throat. Hopelessly, Drew shot—it was all he could do.
The white-and-red head tossed. Shiloh had wrenched back. The Pinto drove against the gray and crashed down. It lay kicking as the larger horse hit out with forefeet, bringing them heavily down on
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