“Shoot!” yelled Cordova. “Amigo,
amigo, shoot! Quick—”
Then Alcatraz struck him!
Half the bones in his body must have been broken by
the impact. It spun him over and over in the
dust, yet as the impetus of the chestnut carried him
far past, Cordova struggled to his feet and attempted
to flee again. Alas, it was only a step!
His left leg crumpled under him. He toppled sideways,
still wriggling and twisting onwards through the dirt—and
then Alcatraz struck him again.
This time is was no blind rush. Back and forth,
up and down, he crossed and recrossed, wheeled and
reared and stamped, until his one white stocking was
crimsoned and spurts of red flew out and turned black
in the dust.
The horror which had choked her relaxed and Marianne
shrieked again. It was that second cry which
saved a faint spark of life for Cordova for at the
sound the stallion leaped sidewise from the body of
his victim, lifted his head towards the half fainting
girl in the window, and trumpeted a great neigh of
defiance. Still neighing he swerved away into
a gallop, cleared the fence a second time, and fled
from view.
FREEDOM
Towards the Eagles, rolling up like wind-blown smoke,
Alcatraz fled, cleared one by one the fences about
the small fields near Glosterville, and so came at
last to the broader domains under the foothills.
Here, on a rise of ground, he halted for the first
time and looked back.
The heat waves, glimmering up endlessly, obscured
Glosterville, but the wind, from some hidden house
among the hills, bore to him wood-smoke scents with
a mingling of the abhorrent odors of man. It made
many an old scar of spur-gore and biting whiplash
tingle; it was a background of pain which was like
seasoning for the new delight of freedom.
As though there was a poundage of joy and additional
muscle in self-mastery, the frame of the chestnut
filled, his neck arched, and there came into his eyes
that gleam which no man can describe and which for
lack of words he calls the light of the wild.
Fear, to be sure, was still with him; would ever be
with him, for the thought of man followed like galloping
horses surrounding him, but what a small shadow was
that in the sunshine of this new existence! His
life had been the bitterness of captivity since Cordova
took in part payment of a drunken gambling debt a
sickly foal out of an old thoroughbred mare.
The sire was unknown, and Cordova, disgusted at having
to accept this wretched horseflesh in place of money,
had beaten the six months’ old colt soundly
and turned it loose in the pasture. There followed
a brief season of happiness in the open pasture but
when the new grass came, short and thick and sweet
and crisp under tooth, Cordova came by the pasture
and saw his yearling flirting away from the fastest
of the older horses with a stretch gallop that amazed
