cried with humiliation. At the moment this was his overmastering feeling. Of fear he felt little, but he would have given a lot just then to stand up with Black Ramon in a twenty-four-foot ring!
Having “thrown” poor Jack very much as he might have done a refractory calf, the outlaw turned his attention to the injured horse.
“So you have ruined one of our horses, too, you Yankee pig,” he snarled; “well, it only makes one more score to settle up with you.”
He drew one of his big revolvers from its chased leather holster, and carefully aiming it, shot the mortally injured animal between the eyes. The creature gave a convulsive shudder and straightened out, – dead. Without another word Ramon swung his black around, and before he could make a move Jack found himself being dragged over the rough ground at a swift pace. Within a few yards his side was bruised and cut, and the clothing torn from him.
“Great heavens, if this keeps up I shall be unable to move hand or foot,” thought Jack in dismay.
For a moment his heart failed him, and then he suddenly bethought himself of his knife. To reach it in his side pocket – for his arms were partially free, – was the work of an instant, and with one quick slash he cut the rawhide that bound him.
Released of its burden thus suddenly, the sure-footed black lost its footing and almost stumbled.
“Diablo!” Jack heard Ramon shrill out as the Border Boy gave one quick leap into the dense woods.
When Ramon looked around there was not a trace of the lad he had had at the end of his lariat. Instead, a broken end of the rope dangled on the ground, its ends frayed out.
“Maledictions!” he yelled, all the fury of his Latin blood boiling to the surface in an ungovernable flood. “That cursed gringo pup has fooled me once more.”
In one of those meaningless frenzies of rage into which his countrymen are apt to fall when thwarted in anything, Ramon began to vent his rage on the first animate object to hand. This was the black horse. On the beautiful creature’s shiny coat the cruel blows of the Mexican’s lariat fell furiously, raising great welts across the glossy surface.
For an instant the black quivered and stood motionless. The suddenness of the attack dazed it. But the next moment, its rage, – as ungoverned as that of its master, surged up in its equine heart. With an angry squeal it gave a succession of huge bucks which would have unseated any ordinary – or extraordinary rider, – but which did not even disturb the Mexican’s seat.
Then followed a magnificent exhibition of man versus horse. And it was not without its watchers – this Homeric struggle for supremacy between maddened man and maddened beast.
Jack, from his hiding place in the ferns and brush, heard the sounds and almost unconsciously he drew closer to the scene of the combat. Parting the ferns he peered through cautiously, and then was held spellbound.
If he were to have been captured for it the next instant he could not have withdrawn his gaze from the spectacle.
With clenched teeth and face that was yellow and drawn with rage, Ramon plied quirt and spur. The big rowelled instruments he wore tore great streaks in the black’s glossy hide. All the time his quirt fell in a perfect hailstorm of blows about the noble animal’s flanks.
But if Ramon’s rage was impressive from its very vindictiveness, how much more so was the just anger of the big horse.
Its delicately pointed ears were pressed close back to its shapely head, while its eye gleamed whitely. As the big silver-mounted bit of the barbarous Mexican pattern cut and gored its sensitive mouth, the animal champed and snapped, – like a rabid dog, – till its great chest was flecked with blood and foam. But it was unsubdued, as unconquered as its master.
“By George, what a rider!” was the involuntary exclamation of admiration forced from Jack as he watched.
And the next moment.
“Gracious, what a horse!”
Suddenly the black reared straight upward, beating the air with its forelegs. For a breath it swayed and balanced perfectly, and then, losing its equilibrium – perhaps purposely – it fell backward.
A cry of alarm broke, against his will, from Jack’s whitened lips. Ramon’s death seemed certain. But instead of the black crushing his body in its fall, the agile Mexican was out of the saddle with the agility of an eel, and as the black leaped erect once more its master was back in the saddle breathing fresh maledictions and flogging and rowelling more unmercifully than ever.
But from that time on, there was no question but that the animal realized that it had met its match. Its bucks were no longer great, animated, splendid leaps, driven by the force of its powerful muscles. Instead, they were limp and dispirited.
But Ramon seemed bent on thoroughly humiliating the animal. Jack’s blood began to boil as he saw the brutal punishment increasing in violence as the black grew more and more subjugated. Its sunken flanks heaved, its limbs trembled and actual tears rolled down its cheeks; but Ramon still flogged and beat and spurred as furiously as ever.
“Oh, that such a rider should be such a brute!” thought Jack, watching the scene from his place of concealment.
“This has got to stop,” he determined the next instant. So great was his anger at the brutal exhibition that had he had his small rifle he would almost have risked crippling one of the Mexican’s arms or legs in order to end the sickening brutality.
But if Jack had not a rifle, he had another weapon perhaps even more efficacious in his hands. It will be recalled that Jack had performed some remarkable feats of pitching at Stonefell College, notably in the great game between West Point and Stonefell. What more natural then than that he should select from the plenty about him, a small, well-rounded stone, somewhat smaller than a league ball.
Feeling sure that Ramon was too intent on his punishment to notice anything else, Jack stepped boldly to the edge of the little clearing, and with a preliminary twist he sent the stone hurtling straight and true at the head of the black’s tormentor.
Like a tree that has felt the woodsman’s axe, Ramon threw up his hands as the stone struck him, and without a sound pitched out of the saddle, crashing in a heap on the ground.
Jack felt rather alarmed as he saw this. He had not intended to throw quite so hard. For an instant a dreadful fear that he had killed Ramon – rascal though the man was, – clutched at his heart.
Coming boldly out from his place of concealment he hastened to the fallen man’s side.
CHAPTER V
CAUGHT IN A TRAP
But Ramon was not dead, – far from it, in fact. As Jack bent above him he reached back, and with a swift, cat-like motion, whipped out a knife and, balancing it on his palm for the fraction of a second, sent it whistling past the lad’s ear.
Before he could rise the boy was upon him, and for a space of several minutes they struggled on the uneven ground, the exhausted horse looking disinterestedly on. Had it not been for its recent punishment it is likely that the brute might have interfered, for some of the oft told tales along the border concerned the black’s love for its master. But as it was, it made no move, not even when Jack, holding Ramon pinned to the ground with one hand, with the other jerked loose the lasso from the saddle, by its hanging end, and rapidly proceeded to bind the Mexican fast.
“Adios,
