In rushing from Lauzanne's stall Allis had left the door swinging on its hinges. At the first cry of defiance from the black stallion Lauzanne had stretched high his head and sent back, with curled nostril, an answering challenge. Then with ears cocked he had waited for a charge from his natural enemy. When the mingled call of his mistress and Diablo's bugle note came to him he waited no longer, but rushed across the passage and seized the black horse by the crest just as he was overpowering the girl.
It was at that instant Mortimer reached the scene—in his hand a stable fork he had grabbed as he raced down the passage. Even Lauzanne's attack, though it gave Allis a respite, would not have saved her life; the madly fighting horses would have kicked and trampled her to death.
“My God! Back, back, you devils!” And pushing, crowding, hugging the side of the stall, Mortimer fought his way to the girl.
Once Diablo's hoof shot out and the man's left arm, snapping like a pistol, dropped useless at his side. His brain reeled with the shock. The oddly swinging arm, dangling like a doll's, with the palm turned backward, seemed to fascinate him. Why was he there? What was he doing? Why was he hammering the horses over the head with a stable fork held tightly in his right hand? He hardly knew; his mind was clouded; he was fighting by instinct, and always crowding along the wall toward the farther corner. The girl had quite faded from his sight. Somehow he felt that he must drive the horses back, back, out of the stall.
Allis, too, was fighting; bringing the crop down with cutting force over the withers, neck, head, any part of the plunging mass in front of her. She could escape now through the opening where the boy had gone; but was not Mortimer in the same position she had been? She had seen him drop to his knees when Diablo lashed out; he must be sorely hurt; now he was reeling like a drunken man as he fought the mad brutes.
“This way,” she panted, catching him by the coat, and pulling him toward the window.
Ah, that was it! He saw her now. It steadied his senses. It was the girl, and she had called him—“Mortimer!”
“Back,” he yelled irrelevantly, in answer, cutting Diablo across the face with the fork. It was pandemonium.
“Get through the window!” the girl screamed in his ear. “Quick! Now!” and she pushed him toward it.
“You—first—back, you devils!” and he pressed away from her, closer to the horses, thrusting and striking with the steel-pointed fork.