ed whites,
and these he had given especial care. He made a good deal of money
selling this strain to friends among the ranchers back in Texas. No
mercenary consideration, however, could have made him part with the
great, rangy white horses he had gotten from the Durango breeder. He
called them Blanco Diablo (White Devil), Blanco Sol (White Sun), Blanca
Reina (White Queen), Blanca Mujer (White Woman), and El Gran Toro
Blanco (The Big White Bull). Belding had been laughed at by ranchers
for preserving the sentimental Durango names, and he had been
unmercifully ridiculed by cowboys. But the names had never been
changed.

Blanco Diablo was the only horse in the field that was not free to roam
and graze where he listed. A stake and a halter held him to one
corner, where he was severely let alone by the other horses. He did not
like this isolation. Blanco Diablo was not happy unless he was
running, or fighting a rival. Of the two he would rather fight. If
anything white could resemble a devil, this horse surely did. He had
nothing beautiful about him, yet he drew the gaze and held it. The
look of him suggested discontent, anger, revolt, viciousness. When he
was not grazing or prancing, he held his long, lean head level,
pointing his nose and showing his teeth. Belding's favorite was almost
all the world to him, and he swore Diablo could stand more heat and
thirst and cactus than any other horse he owned, and could run down and
kill any horse in the Southwest. The fact that Ladd did not agree with
Belding on these salient points was a great disappointment, and also a
perpetual source for argument. Ladd and Lash both hated Diablo; and
Dick Gale, after one or two narrow escapes from being brained, had
inclined to the cowboys' side of the question.

El Gran Toro Blanco upheld his name. He was a huge, massive,
thick-flanked stallion, a kingly mate for his full-bodied, glossy
consort, Blanca Reina. The other mare, Blanca Mujer, was dazzling
white, without a spot, perfectly pointed, racy, graceful, elegant, yet
carrying weight and brawn and range that suggested her relation to her
forebears.

The cowboys admitted some of Belding's claims for Diablo, but they gave
loyal and unshakable allegiance to Blanco Sol. As for Dick, he had to
fight himself to keep out of arguments, for he sometimes imagined he
was unreasonable about the horse. Though he could not understand
himself, he knew he loved Sol as a man loved a fr