Bull Hunter stared in amazement that changed to appreciation, and appreciation that burst in one overpowering instant to the full understanding of the beauty of the horse.  Joy entered the heart of the big man.  He had looked on horses hitherto as pretty pictures perhaps, but useless to him.  Here was an animal that could bear him like the wind wherever he would go.  Here was a horse who could gallop tirelessly under him all day and labor through the mountains, bearing him as lightly as the cattle ponies bore ordinary men.  The cumbersome feeling of his own bulk, which usually weighed heavily on Bull, disappeared.  He felt light of heart and light of limb.

In the meantime the bare-legged boy had come to the side of the big horse, still shrilling his anger.  He stood under the lofty head of the stallion and shook his small fist into the face of Diablo the Terrible.  And while Bull, quaking, expected to see the head torn from the shoulders of the child, Diablo pointed his ears and sniffed the fist of the boy inquisitively.

In fact, this could not be the horse of which the hotelkeeper had told him, or perhaps he had been recently tamed and broken?

That, for some reason, made the heart of Bull Hunter sink.

The boy now reached up and twisted his fingers into the mane of the black.

“Come along now.  And if you pull away ag’in, you old fool, Diablo, I’ll give you a thumping, I tell you.  Git along!”

Diablo meekly lowered his head and made his step mincing to regulate his gait to that of his tiny master.  He was brought alongside a rail fence.  There he waited patiently while the boy climbed up to the top rail and then slid onto his back.  Again Bull Hunter caught his breath.  He expected to see the stallion leap into the air and snap the child high above his head with a single arching of his back, but there was no such violent reaction.  Diablo, indeed, turned his head with his ears flattened and bared his teeth, but it was only to snort at the knee of the boy.  Plainly he was bluffing, if horses ever bluffed.  The boy carelessly dug his brown toes into the cheek of the great horse and shoved his head about.

“Giddap,” he called.  “Git along, Diablo!”

Diablo walked gently forward.

“Hurry up!  I ain’t got all day!” And the boy thumped the giant with his bare heels.

Diablo broke into a trot as soft, as smooth flowing, as water passing over a smooth bed of sand.  Bull ran to the corner of the shed and gaped after them until the pair slid around a corner and were gone.  Instinctively he drew off his hat and gaped.

He was startled back to himself by loud laughter nearby, and, looking up, he saw an old fellow in overalls with a handful of nails and a hammer.  He stood among a scattering of uprights which represented, apparently, the beginnings of the skeleton of a barn.  Now he leaned against one of these uprights and indulged his mirth.  Bull regarded him mildly; he was used to being laughed at.