He was too far away, much too far away. God knows I never should have risked it. For such nice work as mine I should have had him at the most point-blank range. I had no such luck. Worst of all, I had to take him at a slant - not at dead right angles. However, I could not risk letting him go by. There were the many months of that bitter trail behind me. In the instant of his pause, before he could whirl away, I steadied my rifle and fired.
I saw him fall, and I saw no more. I lay on my own face in the grass like a dead man. Indeed, I could barely see - my head was swimming as the Indians beside me caught up their lariats and raced for him. I dared not think; I dared not breathe. I only lay there, saying to myself over and over again: He is dead! He is dead! And then a blinding light struck a glory across my mind. It was the exultant shout of the Indians. I caught up my own rope and staggered out toward the place, shouting, laughing, reeling like a drunkard - drunk with the purest joy.
I came in time to see a white giant bound up from the ground - no, there was not a chance for him. Four lariats were already around his feet. He strove to whirl and struggle toward the flying cloud of mares, but he floundered and went down at once, again. I stood by. I was not needed in the brutal struggle that followed. He was sleek as a white seal as he lay there writhing, twisting, snorting, with hatred and terror in his eyes and with a crimson streak across the top of his neck. At least he was netted in a mesh of ropes so that struggle was useless.
The battle was over. The victory was ours. They began a wild celebration, those stoic Pawnees. While their yells were echoing over the hollow pass, I sat down at the sweating head of the stallion. From the Indians he had had the first taste of man’s might, man’s weapons of torment. But I, who had been the thunderbolt that struck him down unseen, was the first man to lay a hand of kindness on him, and out of my throat he heard the first gentle human speech. What did it mean to him? Well, my sincere conviction is that all the dumb beasts, high and low, feel a magic in the voice of man. They may tremble in terror at it; they may strike because they are afraid; but behind the fear there is a foundation of love also. At least, it seemed to me that some of the wildness left the eyes of White Smoke in the few minutes during which I sat at his head.
For the first two weeks we did nothing but work him slowly along on hobbles - hobbles against which he fought until his legs were cut and bleeding. Sometimes we did not make more than three or four miles, for I insisted that we should not force the horse too far or too fast. He must have plenty of time to rest and to feed. At every halt I was beside him. On the fifth day, for the first time, I sat on his back. He did not attempt to pitch. He merely crouched like an immense panther beneath me, trembling. Then, when he saw that I did not do him any peculiar harm, he stood up and hobbled on once more, but with his ears flattened to his neck and his eyes rolled back with twin devils in them.
After that I spent each day’s march on his back. First with a saddle cinched on, and then with a bridle with which I began gradually to control him. All that time I performed every act of service for him. I brought him to water. I unhoused his head that he might drink. I groomed him twice a day until, as my hand with the wisp of dried grass went down his neck, he lifted his ears a little at each stroke, half automatically, I suppose, at first. But it was pleasant to him.
I have no doubt that during those first days he was constantly, constantly biding his time. Two Feather took me aside to remonstrate.
“Friend,” he said, “the squaws of the Pawnees would be glad if Black Bear went to the happy hunting grounds. But the Pawnee men, brother, would not see so great a warrior killed by a horse. He is a tiger.”
We had been journeying on for a full three weeks or more by this time, and the struggle to win White Smoke had gained me such small returns that I was beginning to despair. Out of an impulse of a foolish moment I said: “Two Feather, you are wise in the ways of horses, but not of White Smoke. I could go this moment and stand at his head.”
The gambler’s glint shone in his eyes. Next to the old rifle that I had given him, his greatest treasure was the brown horse he was riding at that moment. He leaped to the ground and gestured at it.
“This horse is yours, my brother,” he said, “if you stand at the head of White Smoke.”
The other Indians had marked that conversation, and by this I knew I should have to go on with the experiment no matter how I disliked it. There they stood, waiting and watching, keeping their faces calm, but unable to control the savage gleam of their eyes and the feint quiver of their nostrils.
I dismounted and went in front of White Smoke. I took a quiet and a careful view of him. He was not then what he had been before or what he was afterward to become; the weight of captivity had bowed him a little, but still he was glorious as he must have been from birth. He looked at me, I thought, as a caged tiger eyes an enemy. I stretched out my hand, palm up. If there is any gesture which both beasts and men understand, it is this. I began to speak gently, softly. And I walked straight up to him. He flinched from me a little in horror at first. Then his ears flicked back, and his head went out as a snake’s goes in striking. My right forearm beneath the elbow was caught in his mouth. Would he wrench me under his hoofs and stamp me to death? Would he close those jaws and crush the bones of the arm? Or would he simply strip all the flesh away?
While I stood there for a second with the arm imprisoned, by the tremor that passed through his head, I knew that all of these impulses were rushing through his savage brain. The Indians made not a move to succor me. Rather than destroy the stallion, they would have seen him tear a dozen men limb from limb. For what were a few lives to the followers of Bald Eagle who crushed humans like ants with the treading of his feet?
But the teeth did not close, except hard enough to paralyze the hand and wrist of mat arm for a week. They loosed me, and White Smoke threw up his head and looked at me out of mischievous, coltish eyes. I let my injured arm hang in agony at my side. I went straight in and laid my left hand upon his neck, while a little murmur came from the Indians. White Smoke submitted to my caress - yes, and pricked his ears at it.
I have never had an extraordinary power over animals as some men have. Dogs bark at me as readily as at any man, and more than one Indian pony has tried to dash my brains out with his heels. Perhaps I may be allowed to think that between White Smoke and me there was a special affinity. Or perhaps it was something less mysterious, for mine was the first kind touch he had ever felt, the first kind voice. The turn of a hair would have changed the thing. He might have torn me to pieces, but he let his mind waver, and after that he was mine!
It was a simple thing. Every animal trainer has a dozen tales to overmatch it, but to the Indians there was something miraculous in the scene. They looked upon me with a greater awe from that moment. Moreover, I went straight on in the conquest of White Smoke. He never felt spur or whip. With a gentle hand and a gentle voice I worked over him for the simple reason that I felt the enormous danger of his superior might. By sheer strength I could not subdue him, and by sheer cunning I knew not how to work. It was all done by patience, by scores of hours of closest companionship, as we worked our way over the prairie.
But this, at least, was the end. When we came in view of the teepees of Bald Eagle’s camp, my six companions accorded me the place of honor, and I rode into the village at their head, without a controlling rope on the neck or the legs of the stallion, with only saddle and bridle to manage him. More than this, I let the reins hang loose on his neck, and by the pressure of my knees and the voice alone I worked him through the press of horses and men and women and children that had poured out around us.