the Mexican.  He leaned a moment on the fence watching with glittering eyes and then he passed into a dream.  At the end of the dream he took Alcatraz out of the pasture and into the stable.  That had been to Alcatraz, like the first calamity falling on Job, the beginning of sorrow and for three years and more he had endured not in patience but with an abiding hatred.  For a great hatred is a great strength, and the hatred for Cordova made the chestnut big of heart to wait.  He had learned to season his days with the patience of the lynx waiting for the porcupine to uncurl or the patience of the cat amazingly still for hours by the rat-hole.  In such a manner Alcatraz endured.  Once a month, or once a year, he found an opening to let drive at the master with his heels, or to rear and strike, or to snap with his teeth wolfishly.  If he missed it meant a beating; if he landed it meant a beating postponed; and so the dream had grown to have the man one day beneath his feet.  Now, on the hilltop, every nerve in his forelegs quivered in memory of the feel of live flesh beneath his stamping hoofs.

It is said that sometimes one victory in the driving finish of a close race will give a horse a great heart for running and one defeat, similarly, may break him.  But Alcatraz, who had endured so many defeats, was at last victorious and the triumph was doubly sweet.  It was not the work of chance.  More than once he had tested the strength of that old halter rope, covertly, with none to watch, and had felt it stretch and give a little under the strain of his weight; but he had long since learned the futility of breaking ropes so long as there were stable walls or lofty corral fences to contain him.  A moment of local freedom meant nothing, and he had waited until he should find open sky and clear country; this was his reward of patience.

The short, frayed end of the rope dangled beneath his chin; his neck stung where the rope had galled him; but these were minor ills and freedom was a panacea.  Later he would work off the halter as he alone knew how.  The wind, swinging sharply to the north and the west, brought the fragrance of the forests on the slopes of the Eagles, and Alcatraz started on towards them.  He would gladly have waited and rested where he was but he knew that men do not give up easily.  What one fails to do a herd comes to perform.  Moreover, men struck by surprise, men stalked with infinite cunning; the moment when he felt most secure in his stall and ate with his head down, blinded by the manger, was the very moment which the Mexican had often chosen to play some cruel prank.  The lip of Alcatraz twitched back from his teeth as he remembered.  This lesson was written into his mind with the letters of pain:  in the moment of greatest peace, beware of man!