by Max Brand
The moment he had made up his mind, Alcatraz flung himself about the herd and advanced with high head and bounding gallop on the new leader; but the latter had seen his former master fall and apparently had no appetite for battle. He shortened his pace to a hand gallop, then to a mincing trot, and finally lowered his head and moved unobtrusively to the side with an absorbed interest in the first knot of bunch-grass that came his way. To force battle on such a foe was beneath the dignity of Alcatraz, but the whole herd had stopped, every bright eye watching him; perhaps there might be others more ambitious than the bay. He put up his head like the king of horses that he was and stepped proudly forward. Behold, they divided and left a clear path before him; even the mare who had kicked at him when he first came up now shook her head and moved aside. He reached the rear of the herd unopposed and turned to find that every head was still turned towards him with a bright attention that was certainly not altogether fear.
This was very strange, and while he thought it over Alcatraz dropped his head and nibbled the nearest cluster of grass. At that, as at a signal, every head in the herd went down; it scattered carelessly here and there. Alcatraz watched them, bewildered. This was what he had noted when the black leader was among them; then he understood and was filled with warm content. Truly they had accepted him not only as a member but as a master! To prove it, he trotted to the nearest hilltop and neighed as he had heard the black neigh. At once they bunched, looking warily towards him. He lowered his head to nibble the grass and again they scattered to eat. It was true. It was true beyond shadow of doubt that from this moment he was a king with obedient subjects until, perhaps, some younger, mightier stallion challenged and beat him down. Happily for Alcatraz such forethought was beyond his reach of mind and now he only knew the happiness of power.
He noticed a long-bodied colt, incredibly dainty of foot, wandering nervously near him with pricking ears and sniffing nose. Alcatraz extended his lordly head and sniffed the velvet muzzle, whereat the youngster snorted and darted away shaking his head and kicking up his heels as though he had just bearded the lion and was delighted at the success of his impertinence. The mother had come anxiously close during this adventure but now she regarded Alcatraz with a friendly glance and went about her serious business of eating for two.
The grey mare was drifting near, likewise, as though by inadvertence, nibbling the headed grasstops as she came; but Alcatraz shrewdly guessed that her approach was not altogether unplanned. He was not displeased. His quiet happiness grew as the cloud—shadows rushed across him and the sun warmed him. It was a pleasant world—a pleasant, pleasant world! His people wandered in the hollow. They looked to him for warning of danger. They looked at him for guidance in a crisis and he accepted the burden cheerfully.
Fear, it seemed, had made him one with them. All his life he had dreaded only one thing—man; but these creatures of the wild had many a fear of the lobo, the mountain-lion, the drought, the high flying buzzard who would claim them, dying, and added above all this, man. Not that Alcatraz knew these things definitely. He could only feel that these, his people, were strong only in their speed and in their timidity, and he felt power to rule and protect them. For he who had fought man, and won, had surely nothing to dread from beasts. The great moment of his life had come to him not in the crushing of the Mexican or the baffling of the mountain lion or the defeat of the black leader but in the first gentle kindness that had ever softened his stern spirit. He was used to battle; but these, his people, accepted him. He was used to suspicion and trickery but these trusted him blindly. He was used to hate, but because they had put themselves into his power he began to love them. He felt a blood-tie between him and the weakest colt within the range of his eye.
The herd drifted slowly down—wind until late afternoon, eating their way rather than travelling, but when the heat began to wane and the slant sunlight took on a yellow tone they began to show signs of unrest, milling in a compact group with the foals frolicking on the outskirts of the circle. The mares were particularly disturbed, it seemed to Alcatraz, especially the mothers; and since all heads were turned repeatedly towards him he became anxious. Something was expected of him. What was it?
In case they had scented a danger unknown to him, he cast a wide circle around them at a sharp gallop, but nothing met his nostril, his eye, or his ear except the dust with its keen taint of alkali, and the bare hills, and the vague horizon sounds. Alcatraz came back to his companions at a halting trot which denoted his uneasy alertness. They were milling more closely than ever. The brood mares had passed to a sullen nervousness and were kicking savagely at everything that came near. Decidedly something was wrong. The wise-headed grey mare loped out to meet him and threw a course of circles around him as he came slowly forward. Plainly she expected him to do something, but what this might be Alcatraz could not tell. Besides, a growing thirst was making him irritable and the insistence of the grey mare made him wish to fasten his teeth over the back of her neck and shake her into better behavior.
By her antics she had worked him around to the head of the herd and she had no sooner reached this point than she threw up her head with a shrill neigh and started off at a gallop. The entire herd rushed after her and Alcatraz, in a bound, ranged along side the grey and a neck in the lead. While he ran he whinnied a soft question to which she replied with a toss of her head as though impatient at such ignorance. In reality she was guiding the herd. She knew it and Alcatraz understood her knowledge, but he made a show of maintaining the guidance, keeping a sharp outlook and turning the moment she showed signs of veering in a new direction. Sometimes, of course, he misread her intentions and swerved across her head and on each of these occasions she reached out and nipped him shrewdly. Alcatraz was too taken up in his wonder at the actions of the herd to resent this insolence. For half an hour they kept up the steady pace and then Alcatraz literally ran into the reason.
It was a beautiful little lake, bedded in hard gravel and maintained by a dribble of water from a brook on the north shore. Alcatraz snorted in disgust at his folly. What had disturbed them was exactly what had disturbed him—thirst. He controlled his own desire for water, however, and followed an instinct that made him draw back and wait until all the rest—the oldest stallion and the youngest colt—had waded in and plunged their noses deep in the water. Then he went to the lake edge a little apart from the rest and drank with his reflection glistening beneath him.
It was a time of utter peace for the chestnut. While he drank he watched the line of images broken by the small waves in the lake and listened to the foals which had only tasted the water and now were splashing it about with their upper lips. For his own part he did not drink too much, since much water in the belly makes a leaden burden and Alcatraz felt that, as leader, he must always be ready for running. A scrawny colt, escaping from the heels of a yearling floundered against him. Alcatraz gave way to the little fellow and warned the yearling back with a savage baring of his teeth and a shake of his head. The foal, with head cocked upon one side, regarded its protector with impish curiosity and was in the act of nibbling at the flowing mane of the stallion when Alcatraz heard a sharp humming as of a wasp; then the sound of a blow, and the foal leaped straight into the air with head flung back. Before it hit water a report as of a hammer falling on anvil burst across the level pond, and then the colt struck heavily on its side, dead.
That bullet had been aimed for the tall leader and only the lifting of the foal’s head had saved Alcatraz. He recognized the report of a rifle and whirled from the water-edge, signalling his company with a short neigh of fear; the arch enemy was upon them! A volley poured in. Alcatraz, as he gained the shore, saw an old stallion double up with a scream of pain and no sound is so terrible as the shriek of a tortured horse. No sound is so terrible even to horses. It threw the leader into an hysteria of panic. Others of the herd were falling or staggering in the lake; the remnant rushed up the slope and over the sheltering crest of the hill beyond.
The foreman of the Jordan ranch pitched his rifle to his shoulder just as the leader, sweeping back to round up the rearmost of his company, presented a broadside target. It was a sure hit. In the certainty of his skill Lew Hervey allowed his hand to swing and followed for a strike or two the rhythm of that racing body. The sunshine of the late afternoon flashed on the flanks and on the frightened eyes of the stallion; mane and tail fluttered straight out with his speed; and then he fired, and jerked up his gun to await the crashing fall of the horse. But Alcatraz did not drop. That moment of lingering on the part of the foreman saved him, for through the sights of his rifle Hervey had seen such grace and beauty in horseflesh that his nerve was unsteadied. Alcatraz knew the stinging hum of a bullet past his head; and the foreman knew a miracle. He could not believe his failure.
“Leave the chestnut to me!” he shouted as his men drove their ponies over the hill, and pulling his own horse to a stand he jerked the rifle butt hard against his shoulder and fired again; the only result was a flirt of the tail of the chestnut as he darted about a hillside and disappeared. Hervey made no attempt to follow but sat his saddle agape and staring, thinking ghostly thoughts.
This was the beginning of the legend that Alcatraz bore a charmed life. For the mountains were rich with Indian folklore which had drifted far from its source and had come by hook and crook into the lives of the miners and cowpunchers. Into such a background many a wild tale fitted and the tale of Alcatraz was to be one of the wildest.
At any rate, the stallion owed his life on this day to the superstition of Lew Hervey which kept him anchored on his horse until the target was gone. A dozen times his men could have dropped the chestnut who persisted with a frantic courage in running behind the rearmost of his companions, urging them to greater efforts, but since Hervey had selected this as his own prize his men dared not shoot.
It was a strange and beautiful thing to see that king of horses—sweep back around the slowest of his mustangs, shake his head at the barking guns, and then circle forward again as though he would show the laggard what running should be. The cowpunchers could have shot him as he veered back; they could have salted him with lead as he flashed broadside, but the orders of their chief restrained them. Lew Hervey’s lightest word had a weight with them.
However, before and behind the leader of the herd their guns did deadly work. Brood mares, stallions young and old, even the foals were dropped. It was horrible work to the hardest of them but this horseflesh was useless. Too many times they had seen mustangs taken and ridden and when they were not hopeless outlaws they became broken-spirited and useless, as though their strength lay in their freedom. With that gone they were valueless even as slaves of men.
Before the slaughter ended, young or old there was not a horse left in the band of Alcatraz save the grey mare far ahead. She was already beyond range, and as the last of the fleeing horses pitched heavily forward and lay still with oddly sprawling limbs, old Bud Seymour drew rein and shoved his rifle back into the long holster.
“Now, look!” he called, as his companions pulled up beside him. “That grey is fast as a streak—but look! look!”
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.
CHAPTER IX
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!
It was arduous work, frisking from one point of vantage to another, never knowing when the Great Enemy might turn. They could make death speak from the distance of half a mile; under shelter of the hills they might even double back to close range; they might be luring him by the pretense that he was unseen.
In such maneuvers the mare was a dangerous encumbrance, for though she had fallen into the spirit of the thing at once and never uttered even the faintest whinny yet it would be far easier for the men to hear and see two than to detect one. Alcatraz strove to drive her back, sometimes whirling with teeth bared and rushing at her, sometimes half-rearing as though to strike. But on such occasions she merely stopped and regarded him with eyes of mild amazement. She knew perfectly that he would n
ever touched her with tooth or hoof; she also knew that this was dangerous folly—this badgering of terrible man, but since Alcatraz was not wise enough to follow her she must even follow him in spite of his folly.
She stayed half a dozen lengths in the rear, trembling with excitement, for now they passed the verge of the desert and now they entered a man-made road bordered with shining fences of men; what retreat was there if men closed in from the front and the rear? Yet she went on with dainty and uneasy steps. As for Alcatraz, he had pressed up boldly, close to the riders, for now the twilight grew thick and it was hard to make out the glimmering forms before him. Twice he paused; twice he went on. There was no real purpose in this following. He dared not come too close, and yet he hoped to harm them. He continued, wrung by a confusion of dreads and desires.
He was beset with signs of man even in the darkness. Over the well-watered fields of the ranch he heard the lowing of cattle and now and again the chorus of the sheep in a nearby pasture land was reawakened when the bell of the leader tinkled. They were all hateful sounds to Alcatraz, and every step he made seemed to consign him the more definitely to the power of the Great Enemy.
In spite of his boldness he lost sight of the riders among the deeper shadows of the ranch buildings, and he stopped again to consider. The grey mare came beside him and begged him back with a call softer than a whisper, but he merely raised his head the higher and stared at the huge outlines of the sheds and barns. To Alcatraz every one of them was a fortress filled with danger that might leap up at him. Yet he must not turn back after having come all this distance, surely. He went on. The road opened into an unfenced semicircle with corrals on every side and from one of these enclosures a horse neighed, and there was a brief sound of many trampling feet. Some of his own kind were playing there; Alcatraz forgot his hatred a little, forgot man. He went straight to the corral and put his head over the top bar.