There were moments when Steve thought he had a good idea of how the horse must have felt that afternoon.

At last, conscious of having been staring, Steve shifted his gaze to the chair in which Tom sat. It was a large mahogany chair, heavier and stronger than Steve’s or Pitch’s. It had to be. Tom’s giant frame was slumped in it like a bulging sack of grain. Now he was leaning heavily over the table as he talked, his giant hands dwarfing the plate of food set before him. His long fingers, blunt and square at the tips, curled even now although he held nothing in them. No knife or fork, no bull whip or bottle.

Suddenly Steve heard his name mentioned. Looking up at Tom’s dark, low-jowled face, he found the black eyes upon him, the thin lips drawn slightly at the corners in what could have been a smile. Steve could see the small, square teeth—teeth that looked as hard and strong as the rest of this man.

“… that bottle didn’t hurt him none,” Tom was telling him.

So he knew, Steve thought. He was the kind of man nothing could be kept from for very long.

Tom had turned to Pitch. “Isn’t that right, Phil? You’ve seen me use the bottle before. It didn’t hurt the horse one bit, did it?”

“That’s what you tell me,” Pitch said slowly. “I don’t know much about these thing, but …”

Steve’s eyes were upon Pitch as his friend groped for words in reply to Tom’s question. It was apparent that Pitch, too, was uncomfortable. Perhaps, thought Steve, even a little frightened—as he was.

Settling back in his big chair, Tom laughed heartily, drowning out whatever it was that Pitch had meant to say. Then he turned to Steve again. “The top of a horse’s skull is as hard as a rock,” he said, his face unsmiling once more. “You could break a hundred bottles over it without hurting the horse.”

How did he know? thought Steve cynically. Had he ever been a horse? Had he ever been hit heavily over the head with a bottle?

Tom hadn’t finished. “It’s not the bottle, but the water in the bottle that does the trick,” he said. And now his voice was slightly contemptuous of their silent criticism. “The horse thinks the water is his own blood as it streams down over his head and into his eyes. It scares him. It scares him so much that he never forgets it, and you won’t ever find him throwing back his head again.” Tom settled back in his chair once more, as though awaiting their reaction to his full explanation.

Pitch was busy cutting his meat. Steve looked down and toyed with the food before him.

Silence hung heavily about the room until, suddenly, it was shattered by Tom’s explosive laughter. “You’re both too soft,” he said angrily. And then, to Steve, “Why, I wasn’t any older than you when I used my first bottle on a horse’s head. We toughened up pretty young in those days.” He stopped, turned to Pitch. “Or did we?” he added, smiling. “Perhaps I’m mistaken.