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Updated: June 9, 2025
The roan kept others always between himself and any man with a rope but at last he passed Harris with but one horse between. Harris nipped his noose across the back of the intervening horse and over the blue roan's head. Blue stopped the instant the rope tightened on his neck. "You've been busted and rope-burnt a time or two," Harris remarked, and he led the horse out to saddle him.
The Alpena man was fished from under the roan's hoofs just in time to save his life. This incident earned Blue Blazes the name of "man-killer," and it stuck. He even figured in the newspaper dispatches. "Blue Blazes, the Michigan Man-Killer," "The Ugliest Horse Alive," "Alpena's Equine Outlaw"; these were some of the head-lines. The Perkins method had borne fruit.
"Well, step up on him and let's be going," Morrow ordered surlily. Harris took a short hold on the rope reins of the hackamore with his left hand, cramped the horse's head toward him and gripped the mane, his right hand on the horn, and swung gently to the saddle, easing into it without a jar. "Easy, Blue!" he said, holding up the big roan's head. "Don't you hang your head with me."
A few yards farther the Kid stopped the roan and gazed intently through the prickly openings. Then he dismounted, dropped the roan's reins, and proceeded on foot, stooping and silent, like an Indian. The roan, knowing his part, stood still, making no sound. The Kid crept noiselessly to the very edge of the pear thicket and reconnoitred between the leaves of a clump of cactus.
He wheeled and turned, "cutting out" an imaginary animal from an imaginary herd; he loped and he walked, stopped dead still in two jumps and started in one. He leaned and ran his gloved hand forgivingly along the slatey blue neck, reached farther and pulled facetiously the roan's ears, and the roan meekly permitted the liberties.
And even as Collie's hand touched the saddle-horn, Williams sprang back and climbed the corral bars. With a leap the Moonstone rider was in the saddle. The pony shook her head as he reined her round toward the corral gate. The men stared. Gleason swore. Billy Dime began to croon a range ditty about "Picking little Posies on the Golden Shore." The roan's sleek, sweating sides quivered.
My stout horse, Falcon, strode cheerily over the last of those dark, tiresome miles without a stumble or sign of weariness; but the roan's ears were drooping, and he slouched along heavily on his shoulders long before we saw the lights of Symonds' homestead, where we met a hearty if not a joyful welcome.
"Pikepole Pete" found stiff work facing it, and bent low over the red roan's neck. "Blue blazes!" he muttered. "Bennett's a good fellow all right, and he's hurt; but if he hadn't nigh saved my life twice he could get this critter back himself fer all of me!" He glanced at the dark woods and drew up suddenly. "The road forks here, and Turner's is yonder less than a mile.
The vote went against Bostil, much to his chagrin, and the great race was set down for two miles. "But two miles! ... Two miles!" he kept repeating. "Thet's Blue Roan's distance. Thet's his distance. An' it ain't fair to the King!" His guests, excepting Creech, argued with him, explained, reasoned, showed him that it was fair to all concerned. Bostil finally acquiesced, but he was not happy.
They came in together, nigh on an hour ago, and not a tub between 'em. The roan's missing." "Maybe the red-coats have him," said Mr. Rogers, holding out his tumbler. "Here, pass the kettle, somebody!" "Red-coats?" she cried sharply.
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