Alcatraz

THE STRENGTH OF THE WEAK

By simply turning about the crowd was in position to watch the race.  Of course it packed dense around the finish on both sides of the lane but Corson had chosen his position well, the white posts were not more than a dozen yards above them and they would be able to see the rush of horses across the line.  It was pleasant to Marianne to turn her back on the scene of the horse-breaking and face her own world which she knew and loved.

The ponies were coming out to be paraded for admiration and to loosen their muscles with a few stretching gallops.  Each was ridden by his owner, each bore a range saddle.  To one accustomed to jockeys and racing-pads, these full-grown riders and cumbrous trappings made the cowponies seem small but they were finely formed, the pick of the range.  The days of mongrel breeds are long since over in the West.  Smaller heads, longer necks, more sloping shoulders, told of good blood crossed on the range stock.  Still, the base-stock showed clearly when the Coles mares came onto the track with mincing steps, turning their proud heads from side to side and every one coming hard on the bit.  Coles had taken no chances, and though he had been forced by the rules of the race to put up the regulation range saddles he had found the lightest riders possible.  Their small figures brought out the legginess of the mares; beside the compact range horses their gait was sprawling, but the wise eye of Marianne saw the springing fetlocks kiss the dust and the long, telltale muscles.  She cried out softly in admiration and pleasure.

“You see the Coles mares?” she said.  “There go the winners, Mr. Corson.  The ponies won’t be in it after two furlongs.”

Corson regarded her with a touch of irritation:  “Now, don’t you be too sure, lady,” he growled.  “Lots of legs, I grant you.  Too much for me.  Are they pure bred?”

“No,” she answered, “there’s enough cold blood to bring the price down.  But Coles is a wise business man.  After they’ve won this race in a bunch they’ll look, every one, like daughters of Salvator.  See that!  Oh, the beauties!”

One of the range horses was loosed for a fifty yard sprint and as he shot by, the mares swayed out in pursuit.  There was a marked difference between the gaits.  The range horse pounded heavily, his head bobbing; the mares stepped out with long, rocking gallop.  They seemed to be going with half the effort and less than half the speed, and yet, strangely, they very nearly kept up with the sprinter until their riders took them back to the eager, prancing walk.  Marianne’s eyes sparkled but the little exhibition told a different story to old Corson.  He snorted with pleasure.

“Maybe you seen that, Miss Jordan?  You seen Jud Hopkin’s roan go by them fancy Coles mares?  Well, well, it done my heart good!  This gent Coles comes out of the East to teach us poor ignorant ranchers what right hoss flesh should be.  He’s going to auction off them half dozen mares after the race.  Well, sir, I wouldn’t give fifty dollars a head for ’em.  Nor neither will nobody else when they see them mares fade away in the home stretch; nope, neither will nobody else.”

In this reference to over-wise Easterners there was a direct thrust at the girl, but she accepted it with a smile.

“Don’t you think they’ll last for the mile and a quarter, Mr. Corson?”

“Think?  I don’t think.  I know!  Picture hosses like them—­well, they’d ought to be left in books.  They run a little.  Inside a half mile they bust down.  Look how long they are!”

“But their backs are short,” put in Marianne hastily.

“Backs short?” scoffed Corson, “Why, lady look for yourself!”

She choked back her answer.  If the self-satisfied old fellow could not see how far back the withers reached and how far forward the quarters, so that the true back was very short, it was the part of wisdom to let experience teach him.  Yet she could not refrain from saying:  “You’ll see how they last in the race, Mr. Corson.”

“We’ll both see,” he answered.  “There goes a gent that’s going to lose money today!”

A big red-faced man with his hat on the back of his head and sweat coursing down his cheeks, was pushing through the crowd calling with a great voice: 

“Here’s Lady Mary money.  Evens or odds on Lady Mary!” “That’s Colonel Dickinson,” said Corson.  “He comes around every year to play the races here and most generally he picks winners.  But today he’s gone wrong.  His eye has been took by the legs of them Coles hosses and he’s gone crazy betting on ’em.  Well, he gets plenty of takers!”

Indeed, Colonel Dickinson was stopped right and left to record wagers.

“I got down a little bet myself, this morning, agin his Lady Mary.”  Corson chuckled at the thought of such easy money.

“What makes you so sure?” asked Marianne, for even if she were lucky enough to get the mares she felt that from Corson she could learn beforehand the criticisms of Lew Hervey.

“So sure?  Why anybody with half an eye—­” here he remembered that he was talking to a lady and continued more mildly.  “Them bay mares ain’t hosses—­they’re tricks.  Look how skinny all that underpinning is, Miss Jordan.”

“When they fill out—­” she began.

“Tush!  They won’t never fill out proper.  Too much leg to make a hoss.  Too much daylight under ’em.  Besides, what good would they be for cow-work?  High headed fools, all of ’em, and a hoss that don’t know enough to run with his head low can’t turn on a forty acre lot.  Don’t tell me!”

He forbade contradiction by raising an imperious hand.  Marianne was so exasperated that she looked to Mrs. Corson in the pinch, but that old lady was smiling dimly behind her glasses; she seemed to be studying the smoky gorges of the Eagles, so Marianne wisely deferred her answer and listened to that unique voice which rises from a crowd of men and women when horses are about to race.  There is no fellow to the sound.  The voice of the last-chance better is the deep and mournful burden; the steady rattle of comment is the body of it; and the edge of the noise is the calling of those who are confident with “inside dope.”  Marianne, listening, thought that the sound in Glosterville was very much like the sound in Belmont.  The difference was in the volume alone.  The hosses were now lining up for the start, it was with a touch of malice that Marianne said:  “I suppose that’s one of your range types?  That faded old chestnut just walking up to get in line?”

Corson started to answer and then rubbed his eyes to look again.

It was Alcatraz plodding towards the line of starters, his languid hoofs rousing a wisp of dust at every step.  He went with head depressed, his sullen; hopeless ears laid back.  On his back sat Manuel Cordova, resplendent in sky-blue, tight-fitting jacket.  Yet he rode the spiritless chestnut with both hands, his body canted forward a little, his whole attitude one of desperate alertness.  There was something so ludicrous in the contrast between the hair-trigger nervousness of the Mexican and the drowsy unconcern of the stallion that a murmur of laughter rose from the crowd about the starting line and drifted across the field.

“I suppose you’ll say that long hair is good to keep him warm in winter,” went on the girl sarcastically.  “As far as legs are concerned, he seems to have about as much as the longest of the mares.”

Corson shook his head in depreciation.

“You never can tell what a fool Mexican will do.  Most like he’s riding in this race to show off his jacket, not because he has any hope of winning.  That hoss ain’t any type of range—­”

“Perhaps you think it’s a thoroughbred?” asked Marianne.

Corson sighed, feeling that he was cornered.

“Raised on the range, all right,” he admitted.  “But you’ll find freak hosses anywhere.  And that chestnut is just a plug.”

“And yet,” ventured Marianne, “it seems to me that the horse has some points.”

This remark drew a glance of scorn from the whole Corson family.  What would they think, she wondered, if they knew that her hopes centered on this very stallion?  Silence had spread over the field.  The whisper of Corson seemed loud.  “Look how still the range hosses stand.  They know what’s ahead.  And look at them fool bays prance!”

The Coles horses were dancing eagerly, twisting from side to side at the post.

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Corson.  “What a vicious brute!”

Alcatraz had wakened suddenly and driven both heels at his neighbor.  Luckily he missed his mark, but the starter ran across the track and lessoned Cordova with a raised finger.  Then he went back; there was a breath of waiting; the gun barked!

The answer to it was a spurt of low-running horses with a white cloud of dust behind, and Corson laughed aloud in his glee.  Every one of the group in the lead was a range horse; the Coles mares were hanging in the rear and last of all, obscured by the dust-cloud, Alcatraz ran sulkily.

“But you wait!” said Marianne, sitting tensely erect.  “Those ponies with their short legs can start fast, but that’s all.  When the mares begin to run—­Now, now, now!  Oh, you beauties!  You dears!”

The field doubled the first jagged corner of the track and the bay mares, running compactly grouped, began to gain on the leaders hand over hand.  Looking first at the range hosses and then at the mares, it seemed that the former were running with twice the speed of the latter, but the long, rolling gallop of the bays ate up the ground, and bore them down on the leaders in a bright hurricane.  The cowpunchers, hearing that volleying of hoofbeats, went to spur and quirt to stave off the inevitable, but at five furlongs Lady Mary left her sisters and streaked around the tiring range horses into the lead.  Marianne cried out in delight.  She had forgotten her hope that the mares might not win.  All she desired now was that blood might tell and her judgment be vindicated.

“They won’t last,” Corson was growling, his voice feeble in the roar of the excited crowd.  “They can’t last that pace.  They’ll come back after a while and the ponies will walk away to the finish.”

“Have you noticed,” broke in Mrs. Corson, “that the poor old faded chestnut seems to be keeping up fairly well?”

For as the bay mares cut around into the lead, Alcatraz was seen at the heels of the range horses, running easily.  It seemed, with a great elastic stride.

“But—­but—­it’s not the same horse!” Marianne gasped.

To be sure, Alcatraz in motion was transformed, the hollows among his ribs forgotten, and the broken spirit replaced by power, the electric power of the racer.

“It looks very much to me as if the Mexican is pulling that horse, too,” said Marianne.  For Cordova rode with legs braced, keeping a tight pull that bent the head of Alcatraz down.  He might have served for a statue of fear.  “And notice that he makes no effort to break around the range horses or through them.  What’s the matter with him?”

At seven furlongs the mares were in a group of themselves, lengths in front and drawing away; the heads of the cowponies were going up, sure sign that they were spent, and even Corson was gloomily silent.  He was remembering his bet against Lady Mary, and lo, Lady Mary was breezing in front well within her strength.  One glance at her pricking ears told an eloquent story.  Near them Marianne saw big Colonel Dickinson capering.  And the sight inspired a shrewd suspicion.  What if he knew the reputation of Alcatraz and to secure his bets on Lady Mary, had bribed Cordova at the last moment to pull his horse.  Certainly it seemed that was what the Mexican was doing.

“There’s a lady,” the colonel was shouting.  “Go it, girl.  Go it, beauty.  Lady Mary!  Lady Mary!”

Marianne raised her field glasses and studied the rush of horses through the fog of dust.

“It’s just as I thought,” she cried, without lowering the glasses.  “The scoundrel is pulling Alcatraz!  He rides as if he were afraid of something—­afraid that the horse might break away.  Look, Mr. Corson.”

“I dunno,” said Corson.  “It sure does look sort of queer!”

“Why, he’s purposely keeping that horse in a pocket.  Has him on the rail.  Oh, the villain!” It was a cry of shrill rage. “He’s sawing on the bit! And the chestnut has his ears back.  I can see the glint of his eyes.  As if he wants to run simply because he is being held.  But there—­ there—­there!  He’s got the bit in his teeth.  His head goes out.  Mr. Corson, is it too late for Alcatraz to win the race?”

She dropped the glasses.  There was no need of them now.  Rounding into the long home stretch Cordova made a last frightened effort to regain control and then gave up, his eyes rolling with fear; Alcatraz had got his head.

He ran his own race from that point.  He leaped away from the cowponies in the first three strides and set sail for the leaders.  Because of his ragged appearance his name had been picked up by the crowd and sent drifting about the field; now they called on him loudly.  For every rancher and every ranch-hand in Glosterville was summoning Alcatraz to vindicate the range-stock against the long-legged mares which had been imported from the East for the sole purpose of shaming the native products.  The cry shook in a wailing chorus across the field:  “Alcatraz!” and again:  “Alcatraz!” With tingling cowboy yells in between.  And mightily the chestnut answered those calls, bolting down the stretch.

The riders of the mares had sensed danger in the shouting of the crowd, and though their lead seemed safe they took no chances but sat down and began to ride out their mounts.  Still Alcatraz gained.  From the stretching head, across the withers, the straight-driving croup, the tail whipped out behind, was one even line.  His ears were not flagging back like the ears of a horse merely giving his utmost of speed; they were dressed flat by a consuming fury, and the same uncanny rage gleamed in his eyes and trembled in his expanding nostrils.  It was like a human effort and for that reason terrible in a brute beast.  Marianne saw Colonel Dickinson with the fingers of one hand buried in his plump breast; the other had reared his hat aloft, frozen in place in the midst of the last flourish; and never in her life had she seen such mingled incredulity and terror.

She looked back again.  There were three sections to the race now.  The range ponies were hopelessly out of it.  The Coles horses ran well in the lead.  Between, coming with tremendous bounds, was Alcatraz.  He got no help from his rider.  The light jockey on Lady Mary was aiding his mount by throwing his weight with the swing of her gallop, but Manuel Cordova was a leaden burden.  The most casual glance showed the man to be in a blue funk; he rode as one astride a thunderbolt and Alcatraz had both to plan his race and run it.

A furlong from the finish he caught the rearmost of the mares and cut around them, the dust spurting sidewise.  The crowd gasped, for as he passed the bays it was impossible to judge his speed accurately; and after the breath of astonishment the cheers broke in a wave.  There was a confusion of emotion in Marianne.  A victory for the chestnut would be a coup for her pocketbook when it came to buying the Coles horses, but it would be a distinct blow to her pride as a horsewoman.  Moreover, there was that in the stallion which roused instinctive aversion.  Hatred for Cordova sustained him, for there was no muscle in the lean shoulders or the starved quarters to drive him on at this terrific pace.

In the corner of her vision she saw old Corson, agape, pale with excitement, swiftly beating out the rhythm of Alcatraz’s swinging legs; and then she looked to Lady Mary.  Every stride carried the bay back to the relentless stallion.  Her head had not yet gone up; she was still stretched out in the true racing form; but there was a roll in her gallop.  Plainly Lady Mary was a very, very tired horse.

She shot in to the final furlong with whip and spur lifting her on, every stroke brought a quivering response; all that was in her strong heart was going into this race.  And still the chestnut gained.  At the sixteenth her flying tail was reached by his nose And still he ate up the distance.  Yet spent as the mare was, the chestnut was much farther gone.  If there was a roll in her weary gallop, there was a stagger in his gait; still he was literally flinging himself towards the finish.  No help from his rider certainly, but every rancher in the crowd was shouting hoarsely and swinging himself towards the finish as though that effort of will and body might, mysteriously, be transmitted to the struggling horse and give him new strength.

Fifty yards from the end his nose was at Lady Mary’s shoulder and Marianne saw the head of the mare jerk up.  She was through but the stallion was through also.  He had staggered in his stride, drunkenly.  She saw him shake his head, saw him fling forward again, and the snaky head crept once more to the neck of the mare, to her ears, and on and on.

Five hundred voices bellowed his name to lift him to the finish:  “Alcatraz!” Then they were over the line and the riders were pulling up.  It was not hard to stop Alcatraz.  He went by Marianne at a reeling trot, his legs shambling weakly and his head drooping, a weary rag of horseflesh with his ears still gloomily flattened to his neck.

But who had won?  The uproar was so terrific that Marianne could not distinguish the name of the victor as the judges called it, waving their arms to command silence.  Then she saw Colonel Dickinson walking with fallen head.  The fat man was sagging in his step.  His face had grown pale and pouchy in the moment.  And she knew that the ragged chestnut had indeed conquered.  Courage is the strength of the weak but in Alcatraz hatred had occupied that place.