Alcatraz

THE KING

If men may to some degree be classed in categories of bird and beast, one like the eagle, another like the bear, some swinish, some elephantine, some boldly leonine, unquestionably Red Perris must be likened to the cat tribe.  To some the comparison would have seemed most opportune, having seen him in restless action; but the same idea might have come to one who saw him lying prone on a certain hilltop in the western foothills of the Eagle mountains, unmoving hour by hour, his rifle shoved out before him among the dead grasses, his chin resting on the back of his folded hands, and always his attentive eyes roved from point to point over the landscape below him.  A cat lies passive in this manner half a day, watching the gopher hole.

It was not the first or the second time he had spent the afternoon in this place.  For nearly a week he had given the better part of every day to the vigil on this hilltop.  All this for very good reasons.  During ten days after his first coming to the ranch he tried the ordinary methods of hunting down wild horses, and with a carefully posted string of half a dozen horses, he twice attempted to run down the outlaw, but he had never come within more than the most distant and hazardous rifle range.  To be sure he had fired some dozen shots during the pursuits but they had been random efforts at times when the red chestnut was flashing off in the distance, fairly walking away from the best mounts the hunter could procure.  Having logically determined that it was not in the power of horse flesh burdened with the weight of a rider to come within striking distance of the stallion, Red Jim Perris passed from action to quiescence.  If he could not outrun Alcatraz he would outwait him.

First he studied the habits of the new king of the Eagle Mountains, day by day following the trail.  It was not hard to distinguish after he had once measured the mighty stride of Alcatraz in full gallop and he came to know to a hair’s breath the distances which the chestnut stepped when he walked or trotted or loped or galloped or ran.  More than that, he could tell by the print of the four hoofs, all of the same size, the same roundness—­token so dear to the heart of a horseman!  By such signs he identified old and new trails until he could guess the future by the past, until he could begin to read the character of the stallion.  He knew, for instance, the insatiable curiosity with which the chestnut studied his wilderness and its inhabitants.  He had seen the trail looping around the spot where the rattler’s length had been coiled in the sand, or where a tentative hoof had opened the squirrel’s hole.  On a night of brilliant moonshine, he had watched through his glass while Alcatraz galloped madly, tossing head and tail, and neighing at a low-swooping owl.

Great, foolish impulses came to Alcatraz; he might gather his mares about him and lead them for ten miles at a terrific pace and with a blind destination; he might leave them and scout far and wide, alone, always at dizzy speed.  As the hunter stayed longer by his puzzling task, he began to wonder if this sprang from mere running instinct, or knowledge that he must keep himself in the pink of condition.  Like a man, the preferences of Alcatraz were distinctly formed and well expressed.  He disliked the middle day and during this period sought a combination of wind and shade.  Only in the morning and in the evening he ranged for pasture or for pleasure.  Impulse still guided him.  Now and again he wandered to the eastern or the western mountains, then far into the hot heart of the desert, then, with incredible boldness, he doubled back to the well-watered lands of the Jordan ranch, leaped a fence, followed by the mares to whom he had taught the art of jumping, and fed fat under the very eye of his enemies.

The boldness of these proceedings taught Perris what he already knew, that the stallion knew man and hated as much as he dreaded his former masters.  These excursions were temptings of Providence, games of hazard.  Perris, gambler by instinct himself, understood and appreciated, at the same time that his anger at being so constantly outwitted, outdistanced, grew hot.  Then there remained no kindness, only desire to make the kill.  His dreams had come to turn on one picture—­Alcatraz cantering in range of the waiting rifle!

That dream haunted even his walking moments as he lay here on the hilltop, wondering if he had not been mistaken in selecting this place of all the range.  Yet he had chosen it with care as one of the points of passage for Alcatraz during the stallion’s wanderings to the four quarters of his domains and though since he took up his station here an imp of the perverse kept the stallion far away, the watcher remained on guard, baked and scorched by the midday sun, constantly surveying the lower hills nearby or sweeping more distant reaches with his glass.  This day he felt the long vigil to be definitely a failure, for the sun was behind the western summits and the time of deepening shadows most unfavorable to marksmanship had come.  He swung the glass for the last time to the south; it caught the glint of some moving creature.

He focused his attention, but the object disappeared.  A full five minutes passed before it came out of the intervening valley but then, bursting over the hilltop, it swept enormous into the power of the glass—­Alcatraz, and at full gallop!

There was no shadow of a doubt, for though it was the first time he had been able to watch the stallion at close hand he recognized the long and effortless swing of that gallop.  Next he remembered those stories of the charmed life and the tales he had mocked at before now became possible truths.  He caught up his gun to make sure, but when his left hand slipped under the barrel to the balance and the butt of the gun pulled into the hollow of his shoulder, he became of rocklike steadiness.  Swinging the gun to the left he caught Alcatraz full in the readly circle of the sights and over his set teeth the lips curled in a smile; the trail had ended!  The slightest movement of his finger would beckon the life out of that marauder, but as one who tastes the wine slowly, inhales its bouquet, places the vintage, even so Red Perris delayed to taste the fruition of his work.  Pivoted on his left elbow, he swung the rifle with frictionless ease and kept the galloping stallion steadily in the center of the sight.

He smiled grimly now at those fables of the charmed life and drew a bead just over the heart.  The chestnut was very near.  Along the glorious slope of his shoulder Perris saw the long muscles playing with every stride, and what strides they were!  He floated rather than galloped; his hoofs barely flicked the ground, and it seemed to Jim Perris a shameful thing to smash that mechanism.  He did not love horses; he was raised in a land where they were too strictly articles of use.  But even as a machine he saw in Alcatraz perfection.

Not the body, then.  He would drive the bullet home into the brain, the cunning brain which had conceived and executed all the mischief the chestnut had worked.  Along the shining neck, so imperiously arched, Perris swung the sights and rested his head, at last, just below the ears with the forelock blown back between them by the wind of running.  Slowly his finger closed on the trigger.  It seemed that in the silence Alcatraz had found a signal of danger for now he swung that imperious head about and looked full at Red Perris.  By his own act he had changed the aim of the hunter to a yet more fatal target—­the forehead.

The heart of Perris leaped even as it had stirred, more than once, when he had looked into the eyes of fighting men.  Here was an equal pride, an equal fierceness looking forth at him.  Then he remembered the six mares somewhere at the center of the guarding circle which Alcatraz now drew.  What a dauntless courage was here in the brute mind which, knowing the power of man, dared to rob him, to defy him!  Truly this was the king of horses meant for higher ends than to serve as target of a Winchester.  Ay, he could make his owner a king among men.  Mounted on the back of the chestnut no enemy could overtake him; from that winged speed none could escape.  The back of Alcatraz might be a throne!  He could end all that boundless strength by one pressure of his finger but was that indeed a true conquest?  It was calling to his aid a trick, it was using an unfair advantage, it seemed to Perris; but suppose that he, the rider who had never yet failed in the saddle, were to sit on the stallion—­there would be a battle for the Gods to witness!

It was madness, sheer madness; it was throwing away the labor of the patient days of waiting and working; but to Perris it seemed the only thing to do.  He leaped to his feet and brandished the gleaming rifle.

“Go it, boy!” he shouted.  “We’ll meet again!”

One snort from Alcatraz—­then he changed to a red streak flashing down the hollow.

Before the stallion was out of sight, a cry rang down the wind.  It was chopped off by the crack of a rifle, and Lew Hervey spurred from behind a neighboring hill and plunged after Alcatraz pumping shot on shot at the fugitive.  In a frenzy Perris jerked his own gun to the shoulder and drew down on the pursuer, but the red anger cleared from his mind as he caught the burly shoulders of Hervey in the sights.  He lowered the rifle with a grim feeling that he had never before been so close to a murder.

A moment later he began to chuckle behind his set teeth.  No wonder they credited the chestnut with a charmed life.  As he raced away gaining a yard at every leap, he swerved like a jackrabbit from side to side.  Perhaps the deadly hum of bullets on many another chase had taught him this trick of dodging, but beyond all doubt when Hervey returned to the ranch that night he would have a tale of mystery.  To preserve his self-respect as a good marksman, what else could he do?

In the meantime pursued and pursuer scurried out of sight beyond a hill; the gun barked far away and the echoes murmured lightly from the hollows.  Then Perris turned his back and trudged homewards.