by Max Brand
By the first shake of the gate and the corresponding rattle Alcatraz knew that the sliding board fastened it. He sniffed for it and found it very easily, for always the latch-board is the one heaviest with the man-scent. He found it and worked it easily back. It caught on a nail. He tugged again, and as he tugged he quivered at the sound of a human voice and shrank as though the familiar whip of Cordova had cut him.
“They’re a little restless to-night, but aren’t they dears, Shorty?” queried Marianne.
“Kind of dear,” said the cowpuncher, “but maybe they’re worth the price.” For all his surliness, however, Shorty was her best ally.
“Wait till you see Lady Mary begin to — but isn’t that a horse beyond the corral? A grey horse? I think it is, but it can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“There isn’t a grey horse on the ranch, and — oh!”
For the gate of the corral creaked and then swung wide. They could not see Alcatraz, for the bay mares stood between.
“Don’t move, don’t speak!” whispered the girl. “It’s that stupid Lucas man. I told Lew Hervey that he was too careless to take care of the mares; and the first thing he’s done is to leave the gate unlatched. I’ll steal around and—”
At the first sound of the voice the grey mare had drifted deeper into the safety of the night; Alcatraz with a careful effort pulled open the gate; and the wind, aiding him, blew it wide, and now the soft whinny of invitation to the mares cut into the words of Marianne. She went around the corral bending low, skulking in her run; for once the mares got out the gate they might bolt like crazy things and come to harm in the murderous barbed-wire fences. Shorty was hurrying around on the other side.
Before she had taken half a dozen steps the neigh of the stallion, deafeningly loud, brought her to a halt with her hands clasped. She saw the mares start under the alarm-call and rush for the gate; in a moment their hoofs were volleying down the road and the wail of Marianne went shrilling: “Lew Hervey! Lew Hervey! They’re gone!”
Lew Hervey, in the bunkhouse, pushed away his cards and rose with a curse. “That’s what comes of working for a woman,” he growled. “No peace. No rest. Work day and night. And if you ain’t kept working you’re just kept worried. It’s hell!”
He clumped to the door and cast it open.
“Well?” he called into the darkness.
“Every one out!” cried Marianne. “The mares have broken through the gate and stampeded!”
CHAPTER X
THE THIEF
THEY CAME WITH a rush, at that. The mares the girl prized so highly were, in the phrase of the cowpunchers, “high-headed fools” incapable of taking care of themselves. Running wild through the night, as likely as not they would cut themselves to pieces on the first barbed wired fence that blocked their way. With such a thought to urge them, Marianne’s hired men caught their fastest mounts and saddled like lightning. There was a play of ropes and curses in the big corral, the scuffle of leather as saddle after saddle flopped into place, and then a stream of dim riders darted through the corral gate.
All of this, dazed by the misfortune, Marianne waited to see, but as the first of the pursuers darted out of sight she turned and ran to the box stall where she kept her favorite pony, a nimble bay, inimitable on a mountain trail and with plenty of foot on the flat. But never did hurry waste so much precious time. The rush of her entrance in the dark startled the nervous horse, and she had to soothe it for a minute or more with a voice broken by excitement. After that, there was the saddling to be done and her fingers stumbled and stuttered over the straps so that when at last she led the bay out and swung up to the saddle there was no sound or sight of the cowpunchers. But a young moon was edging above the eastern mountains and by that light, now only an illusory haze, she hoped to gain sight of her men.
Down the road she jockeyed the mare at the top of her pace with the barbed wire running in three dim streaks of light on either side until at last she struck the edge of the desert. The moon was now well above the horizon and the sands rolled in dun levels and black hollows over which she could peer for a considerable distance. Still there was no sight of her cowpunchers and this was a matter of small wonder, for a ten minute start had sent them far away ahead of her.
It would never do to push ahead with a blind energy. Already the bay was beginning to feel the run, and Marianne reluctantly drew down to the long lope which is the favorite gait of the cowpony. At this pace she rocked on over mile after mile of desert through the moonhaze, but never a token of the cowpunchers came on her. Twice she was on the verge of turning back; twice she shook her head and urged the mare on again. Hour upon hour had slipped by her. Perhaps Hervey long since had given up the chase and turned towards the ranch. In the meantime, so much alike was all the ground she covered that she seemed to be riding on a treadmill but yet she could not return.
The moon floated higher and higher as the night grew old and at length there was a dim lightening in the east which foretold dawn, but Marianne kept on. If she lost the mares it would be very much like losing her last claim to the respect of her father. She could see him, in prospect, shrug his shoulders and roll another cigarette; above all she could see Lew Hervey smile with a suppressed wisdom. Both of them had, from the first, not only disapproved of the long price of the Coles horses, but of their long legs as well and their “damned high heads.” She had kept telling herself fiercely that before long, when the mares were used to mountain ways and trails, she would ride one of them against the pick of Hervey’s saddle ponies and at the end of a day he would know how much blood counts in horse flesh! But if that chance were lost to her with the mares themselves — she did not know where she could find the courage to go back and face the people at the ranch. Meantime the dawn grew slowly in the east but even when the mountains were huge and black against flaming colors of the horizon sky, there was no breaking of Marianne’s gloom. Now and then, hopelessly, she raised her field glasses and swept a segment of the compass. But it was an automatic act, and her own forecast of failure obscured her vision, until at last, saddle-racked, trembling with weariness and grief, she stopped the mare. She was beaten!
She had turned the bay towards the home-trail when something subconsciously noted made her glance over her shoulder. And she saw them! She needed no glass to bring them close. Those six small forms moving over the distant hill could be nothing else, but if she doubted, all room for doubt was instantly removed, for in a moment a group of horsemen passed raggedly over the same crest. Hervey had found them, after all! Tears of relief and astonishment streamed down her face. God bless Lew Hervey for this good work!
Even the bay seemed to recover her spirit at the sight. She had picked up her head before she felt the rein of the mistress and now she answered the first word by swinging into a brisk gallop that overhauled the others swiftly. How the eyes of Marianne feasted on the reclaimed truants! They danced along gaily, their slender bodies shining with sweat in the light of the early day, and Lady Mary mincing in the lead. A moment later, Marianne was among her cowpunchers.
They were stolid as ever but she knew them well enough to understand by the smiles they interchanged, that they were intensely pleased with their work of the night. Then she found herself crying to Hervey: “You’re wonderful! Simply wonderful! How could you have followed them so far and found them in the night?”
At that, of course, Hervey became exceedingly matter of fact. He spoke as though the explanation were self-evident.
“They busted away in a straight line,” he said, “so I knew by that that something was leading ’em. Them bays ain’t got sense enough of their own to run so straight.” She noted the slur without anger. “Well, what was leading ’em must of been what let ’em out of the corral; and what let ’em out of the corral—”
“Horse thieves!” cried Marianne, but Hervey observed her without interest.
“Hoss stealing ain’t popular around these parts for some time,” he said. “Rustl
e a cow, now and then, but they don’t aim no higher — not since we strung Josh Sinclair to the cottonwood. Nope, they was stole, but not by a man.”
Here he made a tantalizing pause to roll a cigarette with Marianne exclaiming: “If not a man, then what on earth, Mr. Hervey?”
He puffed out his answer with the first big cloud of smoke: “By another hoss! I guessed it right off. Remember what I said last night about the chestnut stallion and the bad luck he put on my gun?”
She recalled vividly how Hervey, with the utmost solemnity, had avowed that the leader of the mustangs put “bad luck” on his bullets and that they had not seen the last of the horse. She dared not trust herself to answer Lew but glanced at the other men to see if they were not smiling at their foreman’s absurd idea; they were as grave as images.
“The chestnut wanted to get back at us for killing his herd off,” went on Hervey. “So he sneaks up to the ranch and opens the corral gate and takes the mares out. When I seen the mares were traveling so straight as all that I guessed what was up. Well, if the hoss was leading ’em, where would he take ’em? Straight to water. They was no use trying to run down them long-legged gallopers. I took a swing off to the right and headed for Warner’s Tank. Sure enough, when we got there we seen the mares spread out and the chestnut and the grey mare hanging around.”
He paused again and looked sternly at Slim, and Slim flushed to the eyes and glared straight ahead.
“Slim, here, had been saying maybe it was my bum shooting and not the bad luck the stallion put on my rifle that made me miss. So I give him the job of plugging the hoss. Well, he tried and missed three times. Off goes the grey and the chestnut like a streak the first crack out of the box, but we got ahead of the mares and turned ’em. And here we are. That’s all they was to it. But,” he added gravely, “we ain’t seen the last of that chestnut hoss, Miss Jordan.”
“I guess hardly another man on the range could have trailed them so well,” she said gratefully. “But this wild horse — do you really think he’ll try to steal our mares again?”
“Think? I know! And the next time we won’t get ’em back so plumb easy. Right this morning, if they’d got started quick enough when he give ’em the signal, we’d never of headed ’em. But they ain’t turned wild yet; they ain’t used to his ways. Give him another whirl with them and they’ll belong to him for good. Ain’t no hosses around these parts can run them mares down!”
She heard the tribute with a smile of pleasure and ran satisfied glances over the six beauties which cantered or trotted before them.
“But even wild things are captured,” she argued. “Even deer are caught.
If the chestnut did run off the mares again why couldn’t—”
Hervey interrupted dryly: “Down Concord way, Jess Rankin was pestered by a black mustang. Jess was a pretty tolerable fair hunter, knowed mustangs and mustang-ways, and had a right fine string of saddle hosses. Well, it took Jess four years of hard work to get the black. Up by Mexico Creek, Bud Wilkinson had a grey stallion that run amuck on his range. Took Bud nigh onto five years to get the grey. Well, I seen both the grey and the black, and I helped run ’em a couple of times. Well, Miss Jordan, when it come to running, neither of ’em was one-two-three beside this chestnut, and if it took five years to get in rifle range of ’em for a good shot, it’ll take ten to get the chestnut. That’s the way I figure!”
And as he ended, his companions nodded soberly.
“Plumb streak of light,” they said. “Just nacheral crazy fool when it comes to running, that hoss is!”
And Marianne, for the first time truly appreciating how great was the danger from which the mares had been saved, sighed as she looked them over again, one by one. It had been a double triumph, this night’s work. Not only were the mares retaken, but they had proved their speed and staying powers conclusively in the long run over the desert. Hervey himself began hinting, as they rode on, that he would like “to clap a saddle on that Lady Mary hoss, one of these days.” In truth, her purchase was vindicated completely and Marianne fell into a happy dream of a ranch stocked with saddle horses all drawn from the blood of these neat-footed mares. With such horses to offer, she could pick and cull among the best “punchers” in the West.
Into the dream, appropriately enough, ran the neigh of a horse, long drawn and shrill of pitch, interrupted by a sudden burst of deep-throated curses from the riders. The six mares had come to a halt with their beautiful heads raised to listen, and on a far-off hill, Mary saw the signaler — a chestnut horse gleaming red in the morning light.
“It’s him!” shouted Hervey. “The nervy devil has come back to give us a look. Shorty, take a crack at him!”
For that matter, every man in the party was whipping his rifle out of its holster as Mary raised her field glass hurriedly to study the stranger. She focused on him clearly at once and it was a startling thing to see the distant figure shoot suddenly close to her, distinct in every detail, and every detail an item of perfect beauty. She gasped her admiration and astonishment; mustang he might be, but the short line of the back above and the long line below, the deep set of the shoulders, the length of neck, the Arab perfection of head, would have allowed him to pass unquestioned muster among a group of thoroughbreds, and a picked group at that. He turned, at that instant, and galloped a short distance along the crest, neighing again, and then paused like an expectant dog, with one forefoot raised, a white-stockinged forefoot. Marianne gripped the glass hard and then dropped it. By the liquid smoothness of that gallop, by the white-stockinged forefoot, by something about his head, and above all by what she knew of his cunning, she had recognized Alcatraz. And where, in the first glimpse, she had been about to warn the men not to shoot this peerless beauty, she now dropped the glass with the memory of the trampling of Manuel Cordova rushing back across her mind.
“It’s Alcatraz!” she cried. “It’s that chestnut I told you of at Glosterville, Mr. Hervey. Oh, shoot and shoot to kill. He’s a murderer — not a horse!”
That injunction was not needed. The rifle spoke from the shoulder of Shorty, but the stallion neither fell nor fled, and his challenging neigh rang faintly down to them.
“Mind the mares!” shrilled Marianne suddenly. “They’re starting for him!!”
In fact, it seemed as though the report of the rifle had started the Coles horses towards their late companion They went forward at a high-stepping trot as horses will when their minds are not quite made up about their course. Now, in obedience to shouted orders from Hervey, the cowpunchers split into two groups and slipped away on either side to head the truants; Marianne herself, spurring as hard as she could after Hervey, heard the foreman groaning: “By God, d’you ever see a hoss stand up under gunfire like that?”
For as they galloped, the men were pumping in shot after shot wildly, and Alcatraz did not stir! The firing merely served to rouse the mares from trot to gallop, and from gallop to run. For the first time Marianne mourned their speed. They glided away as though the horses of the cowpunchers were running fetlock deep in mud; they shot up the slope towards the distant stallion like six bright arrows.
Then came Hervey’s last, despairing effort: “Pull up! Shorty! Slim! Pull up and try to drop that devil!”
They obeyed; Marianne, racing blindly ahead, heard a clanguor of shots behind her and riveted her eyes on the chestnut, waiting for him to fall. But he did not fall. He seemed to challenge the bullets with his lordly head and in another moment he was wheeling with the mares about him. Even in her anguish, Marianne noted with a thrill of wonder that though the Coles horses were racing at the top of their speed, the stallion overtook them instantly and shot into the lead. For that matter, handicapped with a wretched ride, staggering weak from underfeeding, he had been good enough to beat them in Glosterville, and now he was transformed by rich pasture and glorious freedom.
The whole group disappeared, and when she reached the crest in turn, she saw them streaking far off, hopelessly beyond
pursuit, and in the rear labored a grey mare, sadly outrun. Then, as she drew rein, with the mare heaving and swaying from exhaustion beneath her, she remembered the words of Lew Hervey: “It’ll take ten years to get the chestnut!” Marianne dropped her face in her hands and burst into tears.
It was only a momentary surrender. When she turned back to join the downheaded men on the home-trail — for it was worse than useless to follow Alcatraz on such jaded horses — Marianne had rallied to continue the fight. Ten years to capture Alcatraz and the mares he led? She swept the forms of the cowpunchers with one of those all-embracing glances of which few great men and all excited women are capable. Yes, old age would capture Alcatraz before such men as these. For this trail there was needed a spirit as much superior to other men in tireless endurance and in speed as Alcatraz was superior to other horses. There was needed a man who stood among his fellows as Alcatraz had stood on the hillcrest, defiant, lordly, and free. And as the thought drove home in her, Marianne uttered a little cry of triumph. All in a breath she had it. Red Perris was the man!
But would he come? Yes, for the sake of such a battle as this he would journey to the end of the world and give his services for nothing.
CHAPTER XI
THE FAILURE
BEFORE NOON SHORTY, that lightweight and tireless rider, unwearied, to all appearance, by his efforts of that night, had started towards Glosterville with her letter to Perris, but it was not until the next day that she confessed what she had done to Hervey. Certainly he had done more than his share in his effort to get back the Coles horses and she had no wish to needlessly hurt his feelings by letting him know that the business was to be taken out of his hands and given into those of a more efficient worker. But Hervey surprised her by the complaisance with which he heard the tidings.