Horses of the North

III

“We had ranged far and far to the north, that summer,” Milo Morai began. “In those days, the entire tribe numbered about as many as do four or five clans, today, and so all traveled and camped close together for the safety and the strength provided by many warriors. We had followed the caribou herds north in the spring and were heading back southward in the hazy heat of midsummer, lest an early onset of winter trap us in those inhospitable latitudes.”

Dung chips and all the wood scraps available had been heaped upon the coals of the nearest firepit, and in the flickering light thus cast, it could be seen that every man and boy and girl in the camp had formed a circle around that fire and Uncle Milo. Only the herd guards, camp guards and those few prairiecats still out hunting were missing from the conclave of quiet listeners.

“The council and I had decided that the tribe would winter upon the high plains that year, so we had swung much farther to the west than usual. We then had no cat brothers, and so the warriors took turns scouting our line of march, flanks and rear, least we be surprised by dangerous beasts or two-leg enemies.

“Then, on a day, just as Sacred Sun had reached midday peak, three of our scouts came riding in. One of them had been arrowed, and their report was most disturbing.”

Wincing as he shifted, trying in vain to find a comfortable position for his bandage-bulky hip from which the fiendishly barbed arrow had been extracted, Sami Baikuh said, “Uncle Milo, a small river lies ahead, but between us and it are several warbands of nomad herdsmen, and at the very verge of the river there sits the biggest farm that I ever have seen anywhere, in all my life. Some of the houses have wails raised about them—not stockades of logs like many farms, but real walls of stones—and I thought to espy men on those walls. But the fields are all overgrown; they have not been sown or even plowed, this year, I think.

“A roving patrol of the nomad warriors spotted us, and for all that we tried to bespeak them in friendship, they loosed a volley of shafts at us. I was wounded, and since they were a score or so to our three, we felt it wiser to withdraw.”

Milo laid a hand on the arm of the wounded man. “A most wise and sensible decision, Sami. The tribe will exact your suffering price from these men, never you fear.”

At this, the other two scouts exchanged broad grins and one of them said, “Part of that price already is exacted, Uncle Milo. Even as his flesh was skewered, our modest Sami loosed a shaft that took the foremost of those unfriendly bastards through the left eye. I put an arrow into another’s belly—and I warrant he’ll be long in digesting that bit of sharp brass. Even Ilyuh, here, who is not the tribe’s best bowman, gave one of them a souvenir of sorts to take home with him.”

In in-saddle council, it was decided to attempt one time more a peaceful parley with the strange nomads and, if that should fail, to arm to the teeth, ride down upon them and hack a clear, broad path through them, for it was not the wont of the tribe to try to bypass hostile men who were just as mobile as were they themselves; sad, very painful experience had shown that such attempts always bred attacks to flanks or to rear of the vulnerable columns of wagons and herds.

Milo and the chief who had been chosen to head the tribal council for the traditional five-year term of office, Gaib Hwyt, rode out, flanked by half a dozen other chiefs, one of them bearing a lance shaft to which had been affixed the ancient sign of peaceful intentions—a yard-square piece of almost white woolen cloth. Some twoscore yards behind this peace delegation came a mixed troop of warriors and female archers, all fully armed and armored, their lance points twinkling in the sunlight.

As Milo, Chief Gaib and their immediate escort crested a gentle slope and walked their horses down its opposite face in the direction of the mile-distant river, a contingent of warriors sighted them, and while some of them reined hard about and set off toward the east at a punishing gallop, the bulk of the party rode to meet the newcomers, but slowly, in order that they might string bows and unsling targets and otherwise prepare for imminent bloodletting.

When some fifty yards separated the two groups, Milo raised his right hand, empty palm outward, then he and Chief Gaib and the flagbearer moved at a slow walk out into what they hoped was neutral ground, silent but for the stamp of hooves, the creaking of saddles and the jingle-jangle of equipment.

After a few moments of seeming confusion among themselves, punctuated by shoutings and obscenities, three of the stranger horsemen separated themselves from the main body and rode out to meet Milo and the two chiefs.

At easy speaking distance, both mounted trios halted, then one of the strangers kneed his big, raw-boned dun slightly ahead of his two companions and eyed the three tribesmen with open, unveiled hostility. In dress or in overall physical appearance, he differed but little from Gaib and the other chief, his build being slender and flat-muscled, his visible skin surfaces—like theirs—darkened by sun and wind and furrowed by old scars. His hair was invisible under his helmet, but his full beard was a ruddy blond. The baggy trousers were of soft, if rather filthy, doeskin, his boots of felt and leather and his shirt, with its flaring sleeves, of faded cloth. He sat his mount easily and held his weapons with the ease of long familiarity, and his demeanor was that of the born leader of men.

He answered Milo’s smile with a fierce scowl. “I’m Gus Scott. Are you the head dawg of this here murdering bunch of bushwhackers, mister?”

The very air about them seemed to crackle with deadly tension. Milo sheathed his smile, but was careful to make no move toward his weapons, despite the insulting words and manner. “My scouts were fired on first, Scott. They only returned fire in order to cover their withdrawal.”

Scott shook his head. “That ain’t the way I heared it, mister.”

“My tribesmen do not lie!” Milo replied brusquely. “Anyhow, there are only the three of them, and one of them now lies in my camp severely wounded in the back of his hip. Does that sound to you like the kind of wound that an ambusher would sustain, Scott? And also think of this: Would any rational man ambush a score of warriors in open country without considerably more force than three men?”

“Well …” Scott waffled. “I didn’t see it, mister, and I ain’t saying I did, hear? It was ackshully some of old Jules LeBonne’s boys. Could be they drawed bow and loosed a mite too quick. But that still don’t go to say who you is and what you doing hereabouts, mister.”

Milo shrugged. “We’re a tribe of wandering herders, just as you would seem to be, to judge by your personal appearance, Scott. We followed the caribou north in the spring and now we’re returning southwest to winter somewhere on the high plains. We have no desire to fight, only wishing to move our herds and ourfamilies south in peace. We will not, however, be victimized by you or anyone else.”

Scott snorted. “Mister, I don’t give a damn wherebouts you go to, but you better not plan on using that ford down yonder to get there, is all I got to say.”

Grimly, Milo demanded, “And just how do you intend to stop us, Scott?”

“Hell, it ain’t me or mine, mister. You want a peaceful crossing, you better just head twenny mile east or twelve mile nor’west, ’cause that fort yonder, she covers the only decent ford atween them, and them bugtits down there on them walls’ll start picking you off four, five hunnert yards away,”

Milo frowned. “They still have guns, then?”

“Damn right they has! And they knows how to shoot them and they purely hates ever living critter on earth … ’cepting maybe theyselfs.”

Milo did not doubt the stranger’s assertions as regarded the other strangers down by the river ford. There was more reason to believe than to doubt, in this case, for he had experienced many times in the last century groups and individuals who were plainly homicidal for no apparent reason.

The brief, savage nuclear exchange which its survivors had called a war had directly caused very few deaths or physical injuries among the hundreds of millions of human beings then on the North American continent; most of the calamitous losses of life had occurred weeks or months after the last missiles had struck target and had been the result of starvation, various diseases and fighting among the survivors themselves. In many cases, those who had survived to the present day were the direct descendants of men and women who had withdrawn to secure or secluded places and defended those places with deadly force against all would-be intruders. The children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren had imbibed such sentiments as “Death to all strangers” with their mothers’ milk and now could not be hoped or expected to behave other than as the rabid killers Gus Scott had described.

The encampment of the warbands was situated in a fold of ground cupping a small tributary to the river, which just there widened to the dimensions of a modest lake and lay a half hour’s easy ride from the farthest fields and pasturelands of the riverside settlement and fort. Gus Scott’s was the only one that included women, children, wagons and herds; it also was the largest contingent of warriors. All of the other chiefs had brought along just male fighters, spare mounts and a few head of rations-on-the-hoof. Lacking tents, these bachelor warriors slept in the open in good weather and in soddies—circular pits some eight to twelve feet in diameter and three to four feet deep, with rough blocks of sun-dried sods stacked in layers around the rim to bring the interior height to an average of five feet, then roofed over with poles, green hides and finally more sod blocks—on wet nights.

It was in an open space between the Scott encampment and the bachelor camp that Milo, Chief Gaib Hwyt and the other six chiefs sat or squatted in initial council with the chiefs and headmen of the various warbands.

Chef Jules LeBonne’s French—which he spoke in asides to his own cronies, never for a moment dreaming that Milo could not only understand almost every spoken word but could fill in those he did not comprehend by means of telepathic mind-reading abilities—was every bit as crude and ungrammatical as was his English. He was a squat, solid and powerful-looking man and seemed to have no neck worthy of the name; his head was somewhat oversized for his body, and the face that peered from beneath the helmet’s visorless rim was lumpy, scarred and filthy, nor had his basic ugliness been at all improved by an empty right eyesocket, a nearly flattened nose and the loss of most of his front teeth. He and his followers all stank abominably, and Milo doubted that any one of them had had anything approaching a bath or a wash since the last time they had been caught out in a rainstorm or had had to swim a river.

He lisped and threw globules of spittle when he talked in any language. “You mus’ unnerstan’, M’sieu Moray, thees we here mean to do, un affaire d’ honneur ees, also too, ees to rid thees prairie of a always dangereux. Comprez vous?”

Gus Scott, who seemed to be of at the very least equal rank and importance to LeBonne, amended, “Mr. Moray, Jules and his folks tawks Frainch so damn much ever day that he don’t alius tawk Ainglish too pert. Whut he’s trying to say is that that bunch of murderers over to the ford, they done owed us all a powerful blood debt more’n thutty year, now. And we all of us means to colleck in full, this time ’round, we does!”

“I take it that more than a few instances of long-range snipings are involved in this vendetta, then, Mr. Scott?” Milo inquired.

“You fucking right it’s more, mister!” Scott replied with vehemence. “Bit over thutty years agone, was a real bad winter—I mean to tell you a real bad winter, mister! Won’t no game here ’bouts a-tall, I hear tell, and the wolfs was all sumthin’ fierce and all a-runnin’ in bigger packs than anybody’d ever seed afore. Spring come in real late, too, that year, and the floods was plumb awful, whut with the extra-deep snows and thick ice and all.

“By the time folks got to where they could move around some, all of the older folks was all dead and the most of the littler kids and babies, too. Them critters what the wolfs hadn’t got had done been butchered and et for lack of game, so that it wasn’t no feller had more nor one hoss left and a lot what didn’t even have that one. Some pore souls had been so hard put to it they’d had to eat their own dead kin-folks, just to keep alive theyselfs.”

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, Chef Jules LeBonne cackled a peal of maniacal-sounding laughter, which was echoed by his cronies. A brief scan of the chief’s surface thoughts shook Milo and left him more than a little disturbed, but Scott had ignored the laughter and still was recounting the horrors of thirty-odd years before.

“… come late spring and some dry weather, everybody was in some kinda real bad shape, you better believe, mister. Everybody, that is, except them murdering bastards over to the ford. Sassy and pert they all was; even their critters was all sleek. So, anyhow, the grandfolks, afore of us, they all went over to there and they asked just as nice and perlite as you please for them selfish, murdering bastards to help us all out some. You know, give us some eatments and enough of their stock for to start our own herds up again.

“Well, them bastards, they th’owed our chiefs out’n their fort, they did, mister. But them old boys might’ve been starving, but they still had their pride left and they rode at that fort, three, four, five times over, till it won’t enough mens and hosses left to do it no more.”

Scott paused and tugged at a greasy rawhide thong looped about his sinewy neck, then pulled up from beneath his shirt a bit of metal. Flattish it was, almost two inches across, two of its three edges rough and jagged-appearing, for all that all edges and surfaces were pitted with oxidation and shiny with the patina of years.

Milo instantly recognized the thing, knew what it once had been—shrapnel, a piece of shell casing—and he could not repress a shudder, for he had hoped that that particular horror of warfare, at least, was long years gone from a suffering world.

Scott resumed his heated narrative. “This here thing, it pierced my grandpa’s pore laig, right at the same time that some suthin tore the whole front end off of his hoss. My pa and his brother, they dragged grandpa away then, and they said that was the onliest reason any of them lived to tell ’bout it all, too. ’Cause after them dirty, selfish murderers had done shot or burned or tore into pieces all them pore mens, they come out’n that there fort with rifles and great big guns and I don’t know whatall. Some was on horses, but most was on or in big old steel wagons what my grandpa used to call ’tanks’ a-shooting faster than you could blink your eyes and throwing out sheets of fire a hunnert feet long.

“Them bloodthirsty bastards, they kept after them pore folks for twenny mile and more. They kilt every man they could and then just left their bodies a-laying out for the coyotes and wolfs and foxes and buzzards, they did.

“And ever sincet then, their riders has done kilt or tried like hell for to kill every man they come on anywheres near here. For more nor thutty year, they done been killing for no damn reason, mister. We tried to put a stop to it, too, not that it got us all anything, ’cepting for dead relatives and friends and hosses.

“Twelve years ago, when my pa still was chief, we joined up with nearly a thousand other mens from all ’round here on the prairies and we come down on that place down there.”

Milo shook his head slowly. “I’ll say this, your father had guts—about a mile of them—but he, of all people, considering what he’d been through before, should have realized that you can’t successfully oppose armored vehicles with horse cavalry, or use cavalry to attack well-fortified positions equipped with rifles and artillery. How many did you lose on that occasion, Chief Gus?”

“Well,” answered Scott, “he’d done heard from the traders and some others that won’t none of the steel wagons would work no more, and I guess as how that was right, too, ’cause they come out of the fort—some on hosses, but most on their feet and with great long old spears. They stood up in a square-like bunch and put their hosses in the middle and we rode down on ’em, but them old spears was so damn long that they stuck out way past the lines of men, and when the hosses got pricked with ’em a few times, won’t no man could get his hoss to go close again. And all the time, it was bastards standing there with crossbows and rifles and prods and some them fellers on hosses in the middle with real bows just a-shooting down man after man. Finally, one of the bugtits shot my pa and then everybody just tucked tail and ran and the damn bastards come after us with their own damn fresh hosses and killed off a lot more pore mens from ahind. That’s the kind of backstabbing, selfish murderers they is, you see, mister.”

“So,” said Milo, “you’ve spent ten or twelve years breeding and now you’re ready to ride down there and have the most of a new generation of young men butchered and maimed, eh? Well, Chief Gus, this is not my tribe’s fight and I’d far liefer ride a few miles out of our direct route to the high plains than to get involved in such a matter, thank you.”

Scott shrugged. “I didn’t ask for your help, did I, mister? I would of been willing to let you folks ride along of us all and share in the loot and stock and womens and all, but the way I done heard it, it probly ain’t going to take all what old Jules and me has got, much less of your folks, too.

“See, Squinty Merman, the trader, come th’ough in early summer and allowed as how them bastards over there at MacEvedy Station is in some kind of a bad way. Seems as how they had bad crops for two years running, then damn near no crops a-tall, last year. They done et up all what they had stored, their seed grain, too—had to eat a lot of their critters and done had a bad spate of a sickness that’s done took off a lot and left the rest damn poorly.

“Well, Mr. Moray, I figgered right then and there it couldn’t be no better time for to go ’bout paying back the murdering bastards for everything they’d done done to us and our grandfolks and all, so I sent riders out to fetch back old Jules and the rest of the boys. I told them to bring all the fighters they could and that we’d all meet here. Then my own folks and me, we moved on down here and set up our camp and waited for them as was coming.

“Since we all got here, it’s been damn few of them bastards has come out of that fort and all, and”—he chuckled coldly—“it’s damn fewer of the fuckers what done made it back ahind them walls. ’Course, we did lose us some damn good boys and some hosses, too, afore we came to find out just how godawful far them frigging rifles can shoot and kill a man at. But since we done learned how far we has to stay away from them, we ain’t lost but two men, afore today, leastways, and won’t neither one of them kilt by them bastards and their fucking rifles.”

Arabella Lindsay laid aside the body brush and the currycomb, dipped the dandy brush into the bucket of water and then after she had tossed the full mane of the dapple-gray stallion over to the off side of his neck, she began to brush his crest.

More than seventeen hands of bone, sinew and rolling muscles, the great beast stood stock-still, occasionally whuffling his physical pleasure, while all the time in completely silent, telepathic communication with this small two-leg creature whom he adored.

“But this horse needs to run, to run hard.” His beaming was becoming a bit petulant. “Trotting around the inside of the quadrangle is almost worse than no exercise at all. This horse is becoming stiff. We don’t need to go far, just a few miles and then back.”

“Capull, Capull,” the girl silently remonstrated. “I’ve been through all of this nearly every day for weeks now. There are enemies, evil, thieving, murderous men, camped all about the fort and the station, who already have killed many of our folks and stolen or killed their horses and cattle. There are no longer enough men of fighting age left hale enough to go out and drive these skulkers away, as was done in years past, and so we just must abide within our walls until they choose to go away.”

She sighed and laid her cheek against the stallion’s glossy neck. “Poor, poor Father—he is so frustrated by it all. He would like nothing better than to take out his pikemen and crossbowmen and riflemen and cavalry and trounce these filthy, bestial rovers as thoroughly as he did years ago, but all the deaths from illness and hunger this last year have so reduced the garrison that he no longer has enough force to even defend these walls, much less to mount a field operation against the skulkers. I think, as do Father and Director MacEvedy, that only fear of the two big guns and the mortars has kept them from attacking our very walls, Capull, but if they knew just how few loads there are remaining for not only them but for our rifles … Oh, Capull, I am so very frightened. I’m only fifteen, and I don’t want to die, but poor Father is so very, very worried about so many, many things that I cannot but keep a brave face and demeanor in his presence. You are the only friend with whom I can talk freely. I love you so, my dear Capull.”

The huge stallion beamed renewed assurances of undying love and adoration for the girl and added solemn assurance that he would stamp the life out of anything on two legs or four or none that ever offered her harm. He meant it and she knew it.

The two old friends, Colonel Ian Lindsay and Director Emmett MacEvedy, were indeed deeply worried, and with excellent reason. So hard had they been hit, so badly had they suffered, that even the worst of MacEvedy’s predictions had been more than surpassed in actuality. Only some two hundred men, women and children still were alive in all of the fort-station complex, and not a few of those were ill or convalescent, a convalescence lengthened by the poor and scanty rations available to them all these dark days.

The last of the seed grain was long since consumed, along with every last scrap of canned or otherwise preserved foods. Not a single chicken was left, nor any pigs; the rabbit cages gaped empty, as too did the commodious stalls of the shire horses, most of them. The director was now fearful of allowing the slaughter of any more cattle or sheep, lest there be no breeding stock left when once this string of calamities had at last come to an end; however, unless a way could be found to replace the almost expended silage, it might be a hard choice of slaughtering the last of the kine and the horses or of just watching them starve to death. He never, of course, considered surrendering his stock to the besiegers any more than he would have thought of turning over to them his wife or his children.

These days, they all were subsisting on fish from the river, herbs and mushrooms cultivated within the walls and those wild plants gathered from the nearer fields where the riflemen on the walls could keep reasonably safe from the prairie rovers the hardy souls who had agreed to go outside.

This past spring, they had had none of the usual crop or animal surpluses for the trader caravan. Rather had they had to trade metal for all of the jerky the traders would trade, and not enough value had been left of that transaction to obtain any of the needed brimstone, so the supply of gunpowder now was become desperately low. Nor were they overly well supplied with lead for bullets, though Ian Lindsay seemed to think that certain other metals still available—notably, pewter—might be utilized in a real emergency.

The director laughed to himself at the memory of his old friend’s words, as if there could be an emergency any more real and pressing than their present straits.

A flurry of shouts and the sounds of fast-moving feet made him arise from his desk and stride to his office door just as a fist smote its panels in a staccato knock. He opened it to a red-faced soldier.

After a smart salute, the sweaty man said, “Sir, Colonel Lindsay’s compliments. He would have the director at his office as soon as possible. A prairie rover is riding in alone under a white flag.”

Guided by Scott warriors familiar with the territory to be covered, the Kindred scouts had not been long in returning from the two other fords, but their news had run from bad to worse.

“The ford downstream, to the east, some twenty-two or so miles from this place,” Subchief Airuhn Lehvee had informed the tribal council, “is narrow and full of potholes and fissures, and the current is very swift. We could use it—I have crossed worse, I admit—but it will be very slow and we will lose stock, maybe wagons and Kindred, too. It will likely be better, think I, to use this other, upstream ford that was mentioned, rather than to waste so much time and take so much risk as use of the one I just scouted would entail.”

But old Chief Gaib Hwyt shook his head. “Would that we had that option, Kinsman, but I fear it is either that dangerous, treacherous ford you scouted or none. The scouts who rode northwest came back to report that at sometime since this time last year the river changed course up there. There now is no ford, only deep, fast-flowing water in a new bed. So we just must move downstream, to the east, and chance yours, I suppose. There is nothing else for it.”

“There just might be, Gaib. Don’t be too hasty in this very important matter.”

The old man turned his head. “You have advice for the council, Uncle Milo? Ever is your sage counsel welcome and heeded by us, your own Kindred.”

It had not been all that easy, of course. Gus Scott had had to be convinced that something might be accomplished to satisfy the vengeful ends of him and his people, and in hopes of effecting that purpose, Milo had had the Kindred throw a feast to which the non-Kindred nomads had been invited.

Life was hard, almost unremittingly hard, for the cattle-, goat- and sheep-herding nomad peoples of the prairies and plains. Summers were hot and dry and harbored the near constant threat of horizon-to-horizon fires, which could wipe out entire tribes and their herds; autumn was usually only a continuation of the summer until suddenly, like as not catastrophically, winter swept down to envelop the lands and all upon them in its icy, relentless grip.

Winter was always the hardest, most deadly season to man and beast, and each succeeding one took some toll of life, mostly of the aged, the very young or the sickly, but sometimes, entire encampments would be wiped out. And even the natural rebirth of spring could bring along with its warmth the peril of flooding.

Hunting, which occupation provided a large proportion of a nomad’s meat, could be a deadly dangerous affair, and each year took its own toll in deaths and maimings and a full gamut of injuries. Nor were even mundane pursuits really safe, for horses, mules and cattle are none of them noted as among the more intelligent quadrupeds and their native denseness when combined with unreasoning fear and their inherent strength had cost more than one nomad his life.

It was because their day-to-day life was so hard, regardless of the season or the weather, that these people seldom rejected a chance for some pleasure or recreation and imbibed of it in long, deep drafts. Consequently, the invitation of the Ehlai-Kindred tribe was received no less joyously for the gravity of the acceptance speeches of the various chiefs, subchiefs and warchiefs approached. Preparations immediately commenced for a gala two to three days’ revel, with the finest items of clothing, weapons and equipment being unpacked, cleaned, polished and refurbished. Favorite mounts were groomed until their hides were all agleam, for personal and tribal honor and prestige demanded a good and impressive showing of chiefs and warriors, in particular.

Most large game and much of the smaller had, of course, been killed off or frightened away within the immediate environs of the besiegers’ camps, so the Kindred had to ride far, far out to secure provender for the feasting, but find it they did. The various parties brought back numerous deer of varying sizes, a couple of fat bears, wild swine, stray caribou and a brace of some deerlike ruminant with unusual, unbranched horns.

It was the hunting party accompanied by Milo, however, that chanced across the true oddity, a highly dangerous seven days’ wonder.

It was a hunter named Bili Gawn who first found the singular tracks and led the rest of the party to the muddy streambank in which they had been pressed.

Milo and the rest squatted about the huge hoofprints.

“They look no whit different from any herdcow’s,” remarked one of the hunters, “but for the size and the depth of the print. By Sun and Wind, Uncle Milo, the beast must weigh as much as two or three of our biggest bulls. What do you suppose it can be?”

Milo shrugged. “There are two ways to find out. One is to try to track it, but away from this soft ground, out there on the open prairie, it might be a task easier spoken of than done. The other would be to hunt as usual this day long, then arrange to be here when it comes back to drink. But what think you, Bili? You’re the best tracker, by far.”

The red-haired young man wrinkled his brows. “Well, Uncle Milo, we could try both of your ideas. Follow the beast as far out as we can, then carry on with the hunting, set up an early camp and make sure to be here around sundown, which was when it last came here, when these prints were impressed in this mud.”

Luck was with them—they found the object of their search only a mile or so distant, a solitary bovine of impressive proportions. Milo had seen gaur, kouprey, bison and wisent, African and Asian buffaloes, and he had never before set eyes to any bovine of the height or apparent weight of this bull.

The creature was a ruddy-brown-black, with a shaggy hide a bit reminiscent of the bison or wisent. Also akin to those beasts, it had a sizable hump of muscle atop its shoulders, which gave it an overall height at the withers approaching seven feet, Milo reckoned. He also reckoned that figure to be about the span from tip to wicked tip of its shiny-black horns. Although the body was thick and deep-chested, it was held well up off the ground on long legs. The animal gave an impression of immense strength and lightning speed, and the old scars furrowing his hide showed that he must embody immense vitality to match that strength.

Had it been up to Milo alone, he would have left the tough old warrior where he grazed and sought out less deadly-looking prey. But in the minds of the other hunters, there was never any question as to whether or not to slay the gigantic bull, for not only were wild bulls an ever present danger to their herds of cattle, this black bovine represented significant quantities of meat, hide, horn, sinew, bone and hooves, not to mention the inevitable glory and prestige of having taken part in the slaying of so unusual and massive a quarry.

However, none of them being of a suicidal bent, they planned the attack with great care, eight men being none too many to try to put paid to so big an animal. The big question, of course, was whether the bull would make to flee or choose to fight where he stood. Both eventualities must be foreseen and covered in contingency plans.

At last, starting far, far out on all sides, they rode very slowly toward the bull, two with bolas ready in case the beast tried to run, the rest bearing bows, nocked arrows and spare shafts between the fingers of the bowhand. None had even thought of trying to ready or use lance or spear, for the beast clearly had too much power for any man and horse to hold on a lance, and no one wanted to get close enough to put a spear into him until he had been seriously hurt by some well-placed arrows.

The monstrous black bull raised his massive head several times, turning it here and there to test the vagrant currents of air, the long, long horns gleaming in the prairie sunlight. And each time that he did so, Milo’s heart seemed to skip a beat or two, but each time, the bovine went back to grazing the grasses among which he stood. And the eight men rode closer, closer, and ever closer. Already, one or two had come to within extreme range of their bows.

But then the shaggy bull raised his great head yet again, and this time he did not resume his grazing, but stood tensely while he tested the air, then bellowed an awful, bass challenge and began to paw at the ground.