“Heard you got off eight times,” persisted Whack-Ear maliciously. “Each time by the special request o’ the horse.”
“Four,” amended Doughfoot gloomily. “Twice he rolled over, and once he like to fell over backward. No man,” he stated weightily, “should ought to stick in the saddle when a bronc is rollin’ over on the ground.”
“What about the other time,” Whack-Ear insisted. “Was he turnin’ handsprings, mebbe?”
“Humph,” said Doughfoot, doggedly devoting himself to his plate of beans.
“It was that ’ere Rattlesnake hoss,” said “Whiskers” Beck, with his mouth full. “Didn’t notice none of you boys pickin’ him out fer yer regular strings.”
“I never had no trouble with him,” said “Dixie” Kane.
“No,” said “Squirty” Wallace, not too loudly. “Not no more trouble than you’d ’a’ had with a man-eatin’ tagger climbin’ trees an’ a burr under the saddle an’ the stirrups busted an’ no bridle on an’ his tail caught fire, an’—”
“I rode him, didn’t I?” demanded Dixie Kane belligerently.
“Oh, yes,” admitted Squirty. “You rode him. But was you takin’ him where you wanted to go, or was you jest goin’ with him where he wanted?”
Dixie ignored this.
“That horse ain’t been handled right,” opined Whiskers Beck, spearing another potato with his knife. “I mind when I was ridin’ my hoss, Crazy—”
“You ride all horses kinda crazy,” Whack-Ear put in.
“You got to treat a hoss like Rattlesnake different,” Whiskers went on. “Kindness—that’s the ticket. Talk gentle. Give him a potato peelin’, or mebbe a sour-dough bun. Go about it easy-like.”
“An’ mebbe get a rockin’-chair, and take the bronc on yer lap, an’ try singin’ him to sleep,” suggested Squirty. “Oh pickles!”
“I mind,” continued Whiskers, “when I was ridin’ my hoss, Dizzy—”
“You ride all horses kinda—” Whack began.
“Shut up!” barked Whiskers. “These ’ere hosses are what you might call the cayuse breed. They’re like eggs, or some cowboy with a roll o’ jack. Not much to look at, an’ you cain’t figger out what they’re like till they’re busted. On’y, some broncs cain’t be busted. They’ll holler an’ buck an’ roll an’ bite an’ fall on their back till they’re plumb wore to a frazzle. An’ then they’ll sulk. An’ when they sulk—try to move ’em. Dynamite ain’t no assistance.”
“Never see a horse I couldn’t bust,” commented Dixie Kane.
“Young, ain’t you son?” said Whiskers. “Young—an’ ain’t been about much. You’ll see some. Not many mebbe. Some.”
“I betcha I’ve rode more as a million horses,” Dixie announced.
“Plenty men ain’t never seen a non-bustable cayuse,” agreed Whiskers. “Mebbe they’s whole states what ain’t got none of ’em in. But when you says there ain’t no sech thing, you sure are coverin’ a pile o’ ground. Take this here Rattlesnake. You boys all tried him. Some rode him—some not. But he ain’t did a lick o’work yet. An’ mebbe never will, too.”
“I never had no trouble with him,” said Dixie Kane.
And Whiskers gave it up.
* * * *
Doughfoot Wilson did not stay long at the Triangle R. Ambition had come into Doughfoot’s life and was gnawing at his mind. Whack-Ear Banks found him less and less entertaining under the continual ragging that was Whack-Ear’s delight. Day by day, Doughfoot became more dogged and preoccupied. Those who had known him well before his arrival at the Triangle R would have hardly recognized him now.
In former days Doughfoot had been a lazy, happy-go-lucky puncher, with a tuneless whistle in his teeth and a blank look in his eye. Now the coppery leather of his face had set into obstinate lines. Much of his spare time was spent with the Rattlesnake horse.
He would sometimes sit for hours at a time on the top rail of the corral, moping, staring at the refractory bay, and never whistling through his teeth at all. At other times he would spend the whole of a slack half day in and out of Rattlesnake’s saddle.
At first his efforts to bring the bay mustang into useful submission drew an audience of entertained punchers, who sat on the top rail, rolling cigarets and shouting helpful suggestions and remarks.
After a few days, however, the outfit lost interest in the daily exhibition, there being too much sameness about the show. A wild thunder of stamping hoofs and the mad squeal of a horse at dusk would only bring forth a yawning comment: “Guess Doughfoot’s annoying that Rattlesnake pony again. Sure enough off his nut.”
“Something wrong with that boy,” Whiskers would submit.
“Chinch bug, mebbe, crawled in his ear, and it’s rattling round in his nut,” Squirty Wallace would explain.
“Tough bronc, that Rattlesnake.”
“I never had no trouble with him,” invariably remarked Dixie Kane, until they had heard it so often that there was talk of lynching, or sitting on Dixie’s neck.
Doughfoot was sensitive about his troubles with the Rattlesnake horse. A hundred times he had tried to put the animal out of his mind. The bronc haunted him, drawing him back to the fight with an irresistible pull. He hated the sight of the brute and lived in dread of the moments that he spent on the animal’s back. But for some reason that he could not understand, he always got back on. It was the beginning of a long war between man and horse.
During the third week, when all hands had lost interest in the affair, Madge Rutherford, the daughter of the old man, frequently sat on the fence while Doughfoot worked with the cayuse. Doughfoot had never paid much attention to girls, and the unaccustomed surveillance got his goat.
Rattlesnake was enough trouble by himself, and Madge Rutherford’s watchful gray eyes were too much. At the end of the third week, Doughfoot drew his pay, bought the Rattlesnake horse from the old man for seventy-five cents and a chew of plug, and left.
Eight miles to the southwest of the Triangle R, Doughfoot’s trail carried him past an ancient crumbling butte a quarter of a mile to the west. On the peak of the butte, silhouetted against the sky he saw a solitary figure seated on a horse. The rider waved, and he guessed that it was Madge.
“Good guns,” he muttered, jerking bitterly at Rattlesnake’s lead, “ain’t I never going to get away from the two of you?”
He pushed on.
* * * *
From time to time bits of news drifted back to the Triangle R of Doughfoot Wilson and his Rattlesnake horse. Just before snow fell, Charley Decatur stopped by in his search for a soft place to winter in. Charley had known Doughfoot before.
“D’jever meet up with a hombre name o’ Doughfoot Wilson?” he asked.
“Kind of a loose wheel, all the time foolin’ with a no-good pony?” Whiskers asked. “Yep. Kind o’ nutty, when he was here.”
“Well,” said Charley, “if he was kind o’ nutty when he was here, he was plumb off his bat when I seen him last. Somebody with somethin’ ag’in’ him had give him a man-eatin’ wildcat name of Rattlesnake, and the poor hunk of mesquite didn’t have sense enough left to turn the darn thing loose.”
“Rattlesnake gettin’ meaner, is he?” Whiskers asked. “Bad enough when he was here.”
“I never had no trouble with him,”