f what a
range-bred child could do.

Yet he had an audience waiting down at the corral. Drew's mouth was a
straight line. He would soon confirm their belief that _Don_ Cazar had in
truth hired Shiloh instead of his owner. But there was no use trying to
duck the ordeal, and the Kentuckian had never been one to put off the
inevitable with a pallid hope that something would turn up to save him.

Only this time, apparently, fortune was going to favor him.

"Which one you wish, _senor?_" Teodoro Trinfan, rope in hand, stood there
ready to cast for one of the milling colts. Why the boy was making that
offer of assistance Drew had no inkling. But to accept would give him a
slight chance to prove he could do part of the work.

He had already made his selection in the corral, though he had despaired
of ever getting that animal at rope's end.

"The black--"

6

He worked in the dust of the smaller corral, with Croaker's help, adapting
his knowledge of eastern gentling the way he had mentally planned it
during the days since he had accepted the job. With the excited and
frightened colt roped to the steady mule Drew tried to think horse, feel
horse, even be horse, shutting out all the rest of the world just as he
had on the day of the race. He must sense the colt's terror of the rope,
his horror of the strange human smell--the man odor which was so
frightening that a blanket hung up at a water hole could keep wild horses
away from the liquid they craved.

Drew talked as he had to Shiloh, as if this black could understand every
word. He twitched the lead rope, and Croaker paced sedately about in a
wide circle, dragging the colt with him. Drew then reached across the bony
back of the mule, pressed his hand up and down the sweaty, shivering hide
of the black. No hurry, must not rush the steady, mild gesture to the
horse that here was a friend.

The Kentuckian had no idea of the passing of time; it was all part of the
knowledge that slow movements, not swift ones, would prevent new panic.
The blanket was shown, allowing the black to sniff down its surface,
before it was flapped back and forth across the colt's back, and finally
left there. Now the saddle. And with that cinched into place, the black
stood quietly beside Croaker.

Drew mounted the mule and rode. The saddled black, loosened from the twin
tie, followed the mule twice around the corral. The rider dismounted from
Croaker, was up on the black. For perilo