For the red-chestnut was bounding away in pursuit
of his last companion with a winged gallop. It
seemed that the wind caught him up and buoyed him
from stride to stride, and the cowpunchers with hungry,
burning eyes watched without a word until the grey
and the chestnut blurred on the horizon and dipped
out of view together. The spell was broken in
the same instant by a stream of profanity floating
up from the rear. It was Lew Hervey approaching
and swearing his mightiest.
“But I dunno,” said Bud Seymour softly.
“I feel kind of glad that Lew missed.”
He glanced sharply at his companions for fear they
might laugh at this childish weakness, but there was
no laughter and by their starved eyes he knew that
every one of them was riding over the horizon in imagination,
on the back of the chestnut.
THE STAMPEDE
The grey mare made no effort to draw away when Alcatraz
sprinted up beside her. She gave him not so much
as a toss of the head or a swish of the tail but kept
her gaze on the far Western mountains for she was
still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained
a purposeful, steady, lope. It was far other
with the stallion. He kept at her side with his
gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace
and the shelter from man which they might find in
the blue valleys of yonder mountains. His mind
was back at the slaughter of Mingo Lake hearing the
crackle of the rifles and seeing his comrades fall
and die. It was nothing that he had known the
band only since morning. They were his kind,
they were his people, they had accepted his rule; and
now he was emptyhearted, a king without a people.
The grey mare, the fleetest and the wisest of them
all, remained; but she was only a reminder of his
vanished glory.
Remembering how Cordova had been served, might he
not find a way of harming those men even as they had
harmed him? He slackened to a trot and finally
halted. His companion kept on until he neighed.
Then she came obediently enough but swinging her head
up and down to indicate her intense disapproval of
this halt. When Alcatraz actually started back
towards the place where the cowpunchers had dropped
the pursuit, she threw herself across his way, striving
to turn him with bared teeth and flirting heels.
He merely kept a weaving course to avoid her, his
head high and his ears back, which was a manner the
mare had never seen in him before; she could only
tell that she was less than nothing to him. Once
she strove to draw back by running a little distance
west and then turning and calling him but her whinny
made him not so much as shake his head. At length
she surrendered and sullenly took up his trail.
He roved swiftly across the hollows; he sneaked up
to every commanding rise as though he feared the guns
of men might be just beyond the crest and these tactics
continued until they came in view of the small row
of black figures riding against the sunset. The
grey halted at once, rearing and snorting, for the
sight brought again that hateful smell of blood but
her leader moved quietly after the cowpunchers; he
was taking the man-trail!
