Cinchfoot had eaten grass for some time he felt pretty well. The grass tasted sweet and good. Several times he went over to the springs here and drank beside Blaze Face. The sweat dried on his coat. Now and then, as the two of them bit off the green grass on the level valley, Blaze Face would raise his head and listen. At these times he would hear such sounds as a coyote yipping or maybe an owl hooting in the shadows of a pine woods north of them. Cinchfoot would toss his head up, too, and look in the direction Blaze Face did, but after a little, Blaze Face would put his nose on Cinchfoot’s and make some sounds as if he said, “It’s nothing—just sounds, nothing more. We can go right on eating and being comfortable.” And the two would go on biting off the grass.
Cinchfoot had forgotten about the cowboys. But Blaze Face hadn’t. He knew them. More would be seen of them. It would only be a question of when they would be seen. And under the starlight Blaze Face now and then raised his head and looked toward the ridges.
II: Blaze Face
IT was almost noon the next day when Blaze Face and Cinchfoot stood together and peeped through some tall bushes at the cowboys down on the flats chasing a herd of range horses toward the distant ranch. The cunning old Blaze Face, in some way that only animals understand, had taught Cinchfoot how to hide and keep still. Blaze Face would have run off at the first sight of the men on this day, but it happened that they appeared on the south and there were so many of them it looked as if he and Cinchfoot, if they showed themselves, would have to run north toward the ranch. Blaze Face had hidden in the brush more than once and so gotten away. He and Cinchfoot would do that again today; at least that was what Blaze Face thought. He and Cinchfoot stood close beside each other with their heads facing the running horses below them.
The small herd of range horses that the cowboys were chasing, in an effort to turn them, were average range horses. They would fight for a time to get away but after a while they would give up and turn back the way the cowboys wanted them to go.
While Blaze Face and Cinchfoot remained hidden in the bushes, Cinchfoot got pretty nervous. And once he wanted to run out and away—that was when some of the horses started in his direction—but old Blaze Face stayed quiet and Cinchfoot understood he should do the same. But there was one cowboy in particular who knew the ways of old Blaze Face. That cowboy was Clem. More than once in the spring roundups he had found Blaze Face hiding from him in the brush. Clem was certain that he was doing that now and likely he had the black yearling colt with him. But this was something that Blaze Face didn’t know. He thought he could get away by hiding or else he could tell pretty quickly when to run if that time should come.
The cowboys were all well mounted and feeling good. Loud yells could be heard along with the running and whirling and chasing of the horses. After much running and yelling on the flats below, the herd of range horses were headed toward the distant ranch and a dozen cowboys galloped behind in a trail of dust. But some of the cowboys turned their horses and rode west, as it happened, toward the hiding place of Blaze Face and his small crony. Three of these riders were Clem Brown, Charley Steel and Sam Blades. They were hunting for Blaze Face and Cinchfoot. Clem said, “Blaze Face has got that colt somewhere in the brush and he’s hiding with him.” And a little later the keen-eyed Clem said, “Wait!” He pulled on the reins, stopping his horse. “Look at them bushes up on the ridge there—see anything?”
All the cowboys grinned. Thinly veiled behind the bushes stood Blaze Face and Cinchfoot. The cowboys did not act as if they saw the two hiding behind the bushes. They knew Blaze Face and they turned as if they were not thinking much about anything and started their horses at a trot toward rolling ground where they wouldn’t be seen. They wanted to ride around and so get behind Blaze Face and Cinchfoot, then drive them in toward the ranch. If Blaze Face had been alone they would have let him go until some other time. Clem was grinning as he thought of the wily Blaze Face. During one summer previous Clem had found him, as usual, one of the best of cow horses. He would buck each morning when saddled up and he would often buck when he was nearly home at night.
As the three cowboys rode along together Clem said, “I’ve rode that Blaze Face now for several summers and he sure hates saddles and straps and buckles, and seems like he hates ’em worse all the time. He bucks whenever he thinks about it. Sometimes he’ll be going along on the range and a feller will be sitting on him, half asleep, then all of a sudden the fireworks will start and Blaze Face will go to bucking as if he was saying, ‘Why, I’ll be daggoned! Now look at me! I been going along here all day and doing all that feller on my back wanted, and I ain’t bucked a lick! Well, I’ll make up for lost time now! Careless of me actually to forget to buck. I’m almost ashamed to think I’d forget about that part of it!’ ”
The fact was Blaze Face had generally gotten away a month earlier every season. Clem would say, “I’ll get him next spring and he’ll have plenty work to do.” But the cowboys here on this day would not let Blaze Face go. They wanted him and the colt too. Clem did not let his range colts run out on the wild range in the winter as some ranchmen did. He valued his saddle stock and he kept the colts and mares at the ranch and fed them on rough feed until spring. In this way he saved many colts from being pulled down by gray wolves, and Clem’s colts looked well in the spring.
After riding as near as they dared to the cunning Blaze Face and the little colt the cowboys scattered and rode a little apart as they came up. Sudden Blaze Face shot out with a speed well known to every rider now after him. Nevertheless, at the end of an hour, Blaze Face was headed in a course toward the ranch. But try as they would neither Clem nor any of his friends could head Cinchfoot back, although they did not suppose it possible that the colt could run clear away from them all. And when they finally turned Blaze Face and got him going in the right direction, Clem yelled for the riders to let the colt go. He shouted, “He’ll foller Blaze Face in anyway!”
After they had galloped on behind Blaze Face for some time they topped a ridge and Clem Brown pulled up his horse to look back. He grinned and yelled to the others, “He’s coming! He’s lonesome without Blaze Face!”
And it was so. Cinchfoot was trying to see what was being done with Blaze Face, but he did not expect to be caught himself. Even the sight of the men about scared him stiff. It was not so much that he was afraid of being hurt by them. He had had no experience to tell him about that. But he just naturally wanted to be free. While Cinchfoot did not know it, Blaze Face had always been that kind of horse too. The big difference between Blaze Face and Cinchfoot was that Cinchfoot had been given a greater speed than the older horse. And on this day when Blaze Face found that he at last had a horse, even if not a big one, who would try to stay with him out on the wild range, he had done all he could not to be turned back. But Blaze Face couldn’t outrun all these cowboys. He had done his level best and they had got him anyway.
As he ran on now, knowing well that he would be caught and tied up again, he was thinking about his small pal somewhere in the distance behind him, and even though Blaze Face was breathing hard he would now and then let out a wild, shrill nicker as he ran. Then it was that Clem and the others began to hear another wild, shrill nicker far in the rear. It was a sound every cowboys knows, no matter where he hears it—the strange, piercing nicker of a colt. There is nothing else like it. At the time Clem and Sam and Charley were riding close together. Clem turned in his saddle and looked back across a wide level plain stretching miles behind them. He said, “Daggone his little hide, he’s coming, coming hard too, but not too hard. He wants to see what we’re going to do with old Blaze Face, and Blaze Face sure wants to get to that colt.”
Sam said, “Clem, we ain’t going to get that colt easy. If anybody thinks he’ll come tearing up to the corral after we get Blaze Face in, why they’ll be plumb mistaken.”
“It’s so,” said Clem. “That colt ain’t going to run up and say, Tut a halter on me, fellers, I’m plumb itching to be tied up!’ We’ll get him by deceiving him.
