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,” said Dixie Kane.
“Well,” said Charley, “that bein’ the case, Doughfoot has taught him a lot of new tricks. He now kicks, bites, strikes and tromps on you when you’re down. To get any meaner, that horse’d have to learn to throw things, or else start wearin’ a gun.”
“An’ Doughfoot,” asked Whiskers, “how’s he takin’ it?”
“Doughfoot?” said Charley. “Aw, he jest moons around, scratches his head and tries it again.”
* * * *
Winter closed down on communications, but with the gathering of punchers for the spring roundup they heard of Doughfoot again.
“Doughfoot Wilson?” said old Ben Egan when the subject came up. “Yep. Run into a old shirt an’ a pair o’ pants by that name over Nevada way. Not doing so good, seems like,”
“’Smatter with him now?” Whiskers wanted to know.
“Cain’t seem to take no interest in nothin’ but trouble,” Old Ben explained. “Carries his own brand along with him in the shape of a or’nary cayuse name o’ Rattlehead.”
“Rattlesnake,” corrected Whiskers. “Mankiller, he was, when last seen.”
“Rattlehead,” insisted Old Ben. “You’re thinkin’ o’ some other bronc. This ’ere’s a real quiet kind o’ kangaroo. Let’s Doughfoot hang around his neck an’ whisper in his ear, which same he does frequent. Real quiet horse in all ways ’ceptin’ one.”
“What’s that?”
“When Doughfoot gets on him,” Old Ben answered, “anything’s liable to happen, an’ most generally does.”
“He don’t strike no more?” Whiskers inquired.
“Well—” Old Ben seemed to reflect doubtfully. “Doughfoot had his arm in a sling, an’ Rattlehead looked kind o’ bunged up around the knees. Mebbe they come to some sort o’ understandin’.”
“Mebbe they did,” said Whiskers.
“I never had no trouble with him,” said Dixie Kane.
“No?” said Whiskers. “Well, you’re going to have a sight o’ trouble on account of him, if your memory keeps on failin’ you thataway!”
* * * *
As reports of Doughfoot and his horse trickled in from time to time, the Triangle R outfit began to take an interest in the contest that its beginning had not won. The punchers now eagerly pumped every roaming cowboy for news of Doughfoot. Bets were made as to who should have the better of it—Doughfoot, or his mustang friend. Prevailing odds began at two-to-one on the horse, but later dropped to even money as time passed and they heard no indications of Doughfoot’s giving up.
Dixie Kane did not bet. “Of course, if it was me tacklin’ that cayuse—” he began. Hoarse shouts of wrath silenced him and he stalked off in a sulk.
It was a year from the time that Doughfoot and Rattlesnake had left the Triangle R, and winter was closing down, when word reached them suggesting that the long fight was drawing to a close.
“Yeah,” said Slim Dupree in response to Whiskers’ questionings, “I know who ’tis you mean. He’s spreadin’ his blanket about sixty miles south.”
“And did he,” demanded Whiskers, leaning forward, “did he have with him a long-jumpin’ sunfishin’, caterwaulin’ cayuse, what wouldn’t noways stay put?”
“Huh-uh,” denied Slim.
“He didn’t?” Whiskers sank back. “There goes four months o’ my pay! So he give up that Rattlesnake horse, after all!”
“Oh,
