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"Where you goin’ now?" Anse demanded. "Where d’ you think?" the Kentuckian asked dully. "After Shiloh." He went on foot, down the slope, across the open where the gray had unseated his rider and turned to take up the Pinto’s challenge. Since the horses were no longer in sight, there was only one way they could have gone—to the east.
At a distance they circled the waiting pen with walls of entwined brush and sapling, ready to funnel driven horses into a blind canyon. The Pinto’s band must be located, somehow shaken out of the rocky territory their wily leader favored, before that drive could begin. Water, Trinfan said, would be the key.
For three days before we found that trail we had been building a pen for wild ones, casting about for the tracks and runs of the Pinto’s band. Having done so, we would not leave without completing our drive. And, should those out there suspect"—Trinfan shook his head—"we would not have lived to reach the Stronghold, and that is the truth." "This is also truth, padre."
The Pinto’s hoofs crashed against the saddle and Shiloh gave ground. With a scream of triumph the wild one’s head snaked out, teeth ready to set on the larger horse’s throat. Hopelessly, Drew shot—it was all he could do. The white-and-red head tossed. Shiloh had wrenched back. The Pinto drove against the gray and crashed down.
The wild horse was trying for a final throat grip, and Shiloh was on the defensive, running, wheeling to kick, once getting home on the Pinto’s ribs so that the spotted horse squealed with pain. Shiloh had a torn ear and a gash open on his neck. The two battlers twisted and turned in a mad fury of movement. Drew edged on, Colt ready. But to fire now was impossible.
All they sighted of the Pinto’s now thoroughly thirsty band was the stud himself and a black mare—La Bruja—looking down from a vantage point high on a rocky rim. And the hunters did not try to reach them, knowing that all the wild ones would be long gone before they could reach that lookout. "This is the fourth day."
Horses must drink and they were creatures of habit, never ranging far from some one hole they had made their own. Trinfan blankets already flapped about the Pinto’s chosen spring. They had seen the horses approach several times in the past two days and shy away from those flapping things with the fearsome man scent.
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