After losing the battle of the little pasture the previous day Monte knew he only had one choice by then which was to ropethe Palomino around the neck, choke him down, and then try to run to hm to tie up his feet before the Palomino got up again or worse choked to death.
But for that he was going to need more horse. As in a bigger, stronger and faster horse that he could rope off of. And he just happened to know where one was.
When Monte got back down to the P-Bench he didn’t even have to tell the owner about the wreck. All he had to do was take one look at Monte and his horse and knew there had been a big one. They walked up to the house to eat dinner and along the way Monte asked the owner if he could borrow one of his stock trucks that would hold two horses the next day.
Monte’s original plan was to get the halter on the Palomino and then picket (tie) him with a rope in the enclosure. Take the P-Bench horse down and then come back for the Palomino because he only had a one horse trailer. But that would not work for the new plan time wise.
The jovial old rancher said sure he could borrow a stock truck but was careful not to ask what for. He had his suspicions he didn’t want to know.
The next morning Monte took off at day break in the stock truck with a saddle horse in it. He drove straight to the Battle Ax which was his brother’s ranch.
Ted was recently divorced and had taken to going to town on the weekends where he had more girlfriends than I had horses in my string. He would party and tom cat around Friday night and Saturday and then came back to the ranch Sunday or maybe Monday depending on how the dating was going. But Monte could not be sure of any of that.
He was sure enough Ted’s truck was gone when he pulled in and he even checked the house to make sure no one else was around. And there wasn’t. So he unloaded his saddle horse and road down Badwater creek to wrangle Ted’s saddle horses into the corral.
He was only looking for one, Hawk. Which was Ted’s favorite horse and for very good reasons. Hawk had a shiny color almost black but not really. Hawk’s color could seem to change by the way the sunlight hit it. Hawk was tall and muscled up but not round or fat. Hawk was both really stout and fast. And best of all you could rope off him. Maybe not quite as good as the calf roping horses you might see in a professional rodeo. But good enough.
Monte decided Hawk was the horse he needed to liberate … er maybe appropriate … perhaps borrow… Well no Ted would never let anyone else even ride Hawk let along borrow him.
I am not sure which term I should apply here but I have to come up with one not as harsh as Monte was stealing his brother’s favorite horse to rope another horse around the neck.
That just sounds really bad. And besides they didn’t hang horse thieves in that country anymore. But horse stealing is still very much against the law. And Monte was a very fine upstanding law abiding citizen. Most the time at least So he would not like it to be said he stole his brother’s favorite horse.
Once Monte had run Ted’s horses in the corral he had no trouble catching Hawk or loading him and the P-Bench horse and they lit out for the P-Bench. He wheeled in and unloaded their horse.
The owner never came out of the house to see what was happening. He might have looked out the window and saw Hawk in the truck. But no one could prove it so he had plausible deniability.
