The Island Stallion's Fury (2 page)

For a moment the boy just stood there. Never had this great stallion known the touch of hands before his, he knew. Never had Flame even seen human beings before Steve and his friend Pitch had found Blue Valley late last summer. It had taken time to convince Flame that he and his band had nothing to fear from Steve's and Pitch's presence, nothing to fight. But finally Steve had won the stallion's love and confidence. He'd been able to play with him, run with him, ride him any time of day or night. And now after so many long months he was back with his horse, to continue this life which was as new to him as it was to Flame.

He placed more of his weight on the stallion's back. Flame tossed his head as though he knew what was coming and was impatient to get along with it. Steve leaped as high as he could and pulled himself, face downward, across the stallion's back. Flame whirled while the boy was still hanging on precariously, but Steve's hand found the thick mane and quickly he pulled himself upright as Flame again came to a stop.

The boy pressed his knees close to the withers and then he touched the stallion low on the neck. With short, springy steps Flame lightly crabstepped down the valley. He snorted repeatedly, and his ears shifted, half
turning to Steve. He wanted to move out of the crabstep, yet he awaited the boy's command.

Finally Steve moved his leg slightly, his heel rubbing against the stallion. Flame shifted smoothly into a slow, rocking canter. Then his strides lengthened as Steve bent closer to his arched neck. The rhythmic beat of the stallion's hoofs came faster; he tossed his head and occasionally struck out a foreleg either in play or as an indication that he wanted to run all out. Yet he waited for a further command from Steve, and finally the boy hunched his shoulders far forward and pressed his cheek hard against Flame's silken neck.

Steve felt the ground give way beneath the ever lengthening strides, and the wind whistled until it shut out the pounding hoofs. His eyes filled with the rush of wind and he sought protection from it by burying his head in the stallion's whipping mane.

He had ridden all his life, but this was not riding. This was being part of a horse!

Through blurred eyes he saw that they had almost reached the pool beneath the waterfall. The band moved quickly away, scattering at sight of their running leader. Steve touched Flame and the stallion swerved obediently away from the pool, cutting across the valley floor to the far side. Steve began talking to him then, and shifted his weight back off the withers. The stallion slowed down, although he pawed repeatedly with his foreleg, striking out in play.

Steve brought him to a stop, and except for tossing his head Flame stood still. The yellow walls had been the only spectators to the exhibition of Flame's blazing speed.

Steve turned his attention to the band. The horses were grazing again. The boy counted over a hundred of them, including all the suckling foals who stayed close beside their dams. And there were weanlings who frolicked and played, glorying in their newly acquired independence from their mothers and testing their strength and speed against one another. Yearlings and older colts and fillies kept to themselves, content in their maturity.

Flame was their leader. They looked to him for protection against any danger and for guidance. Yet Steve knew that some day one of the older colts, falsely secure in his strength and youth, would attempt to take Flame's leadership away from him. They would meet in physical combat, and to live and maintain his supremacy of the band Flame would kill. There could be but one leader of the band. It had been that way for centuries, ever since the Spanish Conquistadores had forsaken the ancestors of these horses in Blue Valley. Forebears who had been left here to die. But who had not died. Instead, they had lived and bred and the band had survived. The horses the Spaniards had forsaken in this valley were of the purest blood and the finest obtainable; they had passed on their speed, stamina and beauty to their offspring. And Blue Valley with its good grass and water and protective walls had fostered these horses until today there was no finer band in all the world.

Steve touched Flame on the neck, stroking him gently.
No one knows what Pitch and I have found
, he mused.
Not even Mother and Dad know or suspect anything out of the ordinary. They like Pitch; he's an old friend of the
family. They were glad I wanted to visit him on Antago last year, glad that I wanted to come back again this summer. Mother especially. For when Dad had proposed the long automobile trip for their vacation this summer, she had said, “You and I can do that, Paul. Let Steve visit Pitch again. Let him travel outside the country while he can; there'll be time enough for him to take automobile trips with us.”

Steve smiled to himself as he thought of his mother's words. What Mom really had meant was that she was glad he'd be with Pitch. She had great respect for Pitch's intelligence and she thought it would do Steve good to be with him. She thought of Pitch as a scholar, an historian. She knew of his interest in archaeology and that he and Steve were doing some digging on an uninhabited island twenty miles northeast of Antago. Yes, that was what had brought them to the spit of Azul Island. And they had found more than they'd bargained for, much more than they'd ever dreamed of finding. But no one else knew.

Flame moved uneasily beneath him. The stallion wanted to be off with his band, and Steve noticed that it was becoming dark fast. He'd better be getting back to Pitch. He had a lot of questions he wanted to ask him. Touching Flame, he cantered across the valley to the trail which went up to the ledge; there he dismounted and, giving the stallion a light slap on his haunches, watched while Flame returned to his band.

He started up the trail, thinking of all the wonderful days to come, over two months, which he'd be able to spend with Flame and the band in their lost world.

The climb to the ledge was steep but not hard, and within a few minutes Steve had reached the campsite. But Phil Pitcher didn't look up from his writing.

“You'll go blind trying to work in the dark, Pitch.”

The man raised his head in a quick, startled way. “Oh, it's you, Steve,” he said, putting down his pen.

“Not expecting anyone else, were you?” Steve asked, smiling.

“No. No, of course not. It was just that I was so absorbed.” Pitch paused to remove his glasses and rub his eyes, then he too smiled. “You're right. It
is
almost dark. I'll just put these papers away.”

Steve turned on the Coleman gasoline lantern, and his eyes blinked in its bright yellow light. He watched Pitch pick up the pages of the work he had done that day and place them carefully in his leather briefcase before putting it just within the cave's entrance. At the base of the opposite wall were three shovels, two picks, an axe and a pile of rope. Beside them were two rolled
sleeping bags and a half-filled box of canned foods. In the center of the ledge was a small but efficient two-plate kerosene stove, and next to it all the pots, pans and eating utensils they'd ever need. Just within the entrance of the cave Steve saw a box containing two flashlights, a camera, more tools and a pile of other things. Yes, during the ten months he'd been away from Blue Valley, Pitch had well equipped the camp with supplies from Antago.

“You're writing about everything?” he asked Pitch.

“Yes, Steve. I began with our finding the entrance to the tunnels, and then have gone on covering just about everything I've seen and done during the time you've been away. I've given a detailed account of every discovery, every trip I've taken through the tunnels. I've taken photographs of Blue Valley, the smaller valley and the canyons and gorges. Also, I've given what I believe from my findings is an accurate history of the island. I've stated that I believe that this island, like Cuba and Puerto Rico, was used as a supply base by the Spaniards during their conquest of the New World. From here they equipped their armies with provisions and weapons …”

“And horses,” Steve interrupted.

“Yes, horses,” Pitch agreed. “Horses of purest blood, they were. The very finest specimens of their race to be obtained in Spain. Horses who faced the battles and world-shaking adventures with the men of Cortés, the Pizarros and DeSoto in their conquest of the Americas!” Pitch's eyes were bright with his enthusiasm. “I've mentioned, too, Steve, that I believe this island was the Spaniards' very last stronghold in the Caribbean Sea. I
feel that when the English and French drove back the Spanish armies in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the Spaniards retreated to this natural fortress. But in time they had to forsake this island hurriedly, and they left behind the ancestors of the horses we have in Blue Valley today.”

Pitch walked over to the stove, and Steve followed. “But you're not finished with your work, are you, Pitch?” he asked quickly.

“Oh, no, not by any means, Steve. There's much more I want to add to it, many more years of excavation work, tunnel explorations and writing before the complete job is done the way I want to do it and I can send my manuscript to an historical society.”

The boy's tense body relaxed as he listened to his friend. He knew that when Pitch finished his work and his discoveries were made public this world would no longer belong solely to them. But Pitch had said that it would take years before his work was complete. The longer it took the better, Steve felt. He loved Flame and his band and Blue Valley too much just as they were to be ashamed of feeling as he did.

Pitch was speaking again. “Oh, and I've drawn a map of the island,” he said. “It's not a very professional map, but I want to show it to you.”

He went to the wooden box just within the cave's entrance and withdrew a large, rolled paper. He placed it on the box he'd used for a table, then called Steve while unrolling the map.

“Now,” he said, looking up at the night sky, “let's pretend we're up there over Azul Island and looking
down. Not that you'd actually be able to see much of what I have on this map if you were in a plane flying over Azul Island,” he explained hurriedly. “If that ever did happen—and it never has so far—and you could get close enough to the dome, you'd know there was a valley down here, but little more. Anyway,” he continued, “it's just the effect I want you to have. Try to put yourself up there and pretend you've got x-ray eyes so you can see right through the rock to the tunnels when necessary.” He laughed at his last remark, then took a pencil from his pocket and placed the point on the map.

“Here's the island, running north and south. We'll start at the southern end, the spit of land and the pier. Last summer you and I walked up the spit to the canyon at the end. I call it Spit Canyon on the map. We stopped at the end and looked up at the wall. About three hundred feet up we saw a ledge. I have it marked Lookout Ledge here. Now, that's where we saw Flame that first night, so you and I knew the rest of Azul Island couldn't be solid rock as everyone believed … not if a horse was living inside there somewhere.

“Do you follow me?” Pitch asked. When Steve nodded, Pitch continued. “Well, back of that ledge is a cave and narrow chasm which you can't see from the spit below. We go through the chasm and then down a steep trail that leads to the bottle-shaped canyon … I call it Bottle Canyon here. The canyon goes right to Blue Valley.” Pitch raised his eyes from the map. “Comes in right over there,” he said.

On the same wall as their camp, but almost at the far side of the valley where the wild cane grew, Steve
could make out the dark, narrow cleavage in the wall. “I've noticed that canyon, but never went up it,” he said.

“Let's get back to the spit again,” Pitch said, bringing his pencil back to the map. “When we saw Flame on Lookout Ledge that first night we knew there had to be an entrance to the interior of Azul Island. We realized it wasn't possible to reach the ledge from the spit so we went back to the pier and, taking the small dory from the launch, rowed until we saw our chance to get close to the barrier wall at what I call Chimney Entrance on this map. I named it that because we climbed the cleft in the wall and went down the ventilation shaft we found on top, which is much like a chimney.

“And that took us into the tunnels,” he added quietly.

Pitch paused and Steve did not urge him to go on. Each remembered that only by the grace of God had they found their way out of the tunnels and were alive to discuss them now.

Finally Pitch moved his pencil over the multitude of lines he had drawn on the map to indicate the tunnels. “This is not a true picture of the direction or number of tunnels,” he said. “On this map I'm just giving you an idea of where they are. The work of plotting them accurately is a big job and one I'm not yet prepared to tackle.”

“But you do know them, Pitch.”

“Only some of them, Steve; a small percentage of the great number that make up this maze. They're a world of their own … an underground world.

“But to go back to this map,” he went on. “From the tunnels we come to Blue Valley at the top of the waterfall.
Then here's the trail leading down the wall to our present campsite overlooking the valley. Now, you know the rest of this pretty well, the way we get to our launch. But I want to go over it anyway. About two miles up the valley we find the marsh, right here.”

Pitch's pencil found the crossed marks on the left side of the valley which designated the marsh; then simultaneously he and Steve looked up in the direction of the valley. But it was too dark for them to see anything of the marsh. They turned back to the map.

“Here on the other side of the marsh,” Pitch continued, “is the dry gorge of the stream that once emptied into the marsh. We follow it until we come to the little valley. I just call it Small Valley on the map,” he explained. “Crossing that valley, we enter the chasm and cave which take us to the sea entrance. And there, as you know, we have our launch in the great chamber, making it possible for us to come and go as we please … using the very same entrance the Conquistadores used in bringing their armies and supplies into this stronghold.”