Another man would have been worried about the future; but Bull Hunter went down the road with his swinging stride, perfectly at peace with himself and with life.  He had not enough money in his pocket to buy a meal, but he was not thinking so far ahead.

It was still well before noon when he came in sight of the Bridewell place.  It varied not a whit from the typical ranch of that region, a low-built collection of sheds and arms sprawling around the ranch house itself.  About the building was a far-flung network of corrals.  Bull Hunter found his way among them and followed a sound of hammering.  He was well among the sheds when a great black stallion shot into view around a nearby corner, tossing his head and mane.  He was pursued by a shrill voice crying, “Diablo!  Hey!  You old fool!  Stand still ... it’s me ... it’s Tod!”

To the amazement of Bull Hunter, Diablo the Terrible, Diablo the man-killer, paused and reluctantly turned about, shaking his head as though he did not wish to obey but was compelled by the force of conscience.  At once a bare-legged boy of ten came in sight, running and shaking his fist angrily at the giant horse.  Indeed, it was a tremendous animal.  Not the seventeen hands that the hotel proprietor had described to Bull, but a full sixteen three, and so proudly high-headed, so stout-muscled of body, so magnificently long and tapering of leg, that a wiser horseman than the hotelkeeper might have put Diablo down for more than seventeen hands.

Most tall horses are like tall men—­they are freakish and malformed in some of their members; but Diablo was as trim as a pony.  He had the high withers, the mightily sloped shoulders, and the short back of a weight carrier.  And although at first glance his underpinning seemed too frail to bear the great mass of his weight or withstand the effort of his driving power of shoulders and deep, broad thighs, yet a closer reckoning made one aware of the comfortable dimensions of the cannon bone with all that this feature portended.  Diablo carried his bulk with the grace which comes of compacted power well in hand.

Not that Bull Hunter analyzed the stallion in any such fashion.  He was, literally, ignorant of horseflesh.  But in spite of his ignorance the long neck, not overfleshed, suggested length of stride and the mighty girth meant wind beyond exhaustion and told of the great heart within.  The points of an ordinary animal may be overlooked, but a great horse speaks for himself in every language and to every man.  He was coal-black, this Diablo, except for the white stocking of his off forefoot; he was night-black, and so silken sleek that, as he turned and pranced, flashes of light glimmered from shoulders to flanks.