Alcatraz

by Max Brand

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!