Alcatraz

INVISIBLE DANGER

Alcatraz, cresting the hill, warned the mares with a snort.  One by one the bays brought up their beautiful heads to attention but the grey, as was her custom in moments of crisis or indecision, trotted forward to the side of the leader and glanced over the rolling lands below.  Her decision was instant and decisive.  She shook her head and turning to the side, she started down the left slope at a trot.  Alcatraz called her back with another snort.  He knew, as well as she did, the meaning of that faint odor on the east wind:  it was man, unmistakably the great enemy; but during five days that scent had hung steadily here and yet, over all the miles which he could survey there was no sign of a man nor any places where man could be concealed.  There was not a tree; there was not a fallen log; there was not a stump; there was not a rock of such respectable dimensions that even a rabbit would dare to seek shelter behind it.  Still, mysteriously, the scent of man was there.

Alcatraz stamped with impatience and when the grey whinnied he merely shook his head angrily in answer.  It irritated him to have her always right, always cautious, and besides he felt somewhat shamed by the necessity of using her as a court of last appeal.  To be sure, he was a keener judge of the sights and scents of the mountain desert than any of the half-bred mares but though he lived to fifty years he would never approach the stored wisdom, the uncanny acuteness of eye, ear, and nostril of the wild grey.  Her view-point seemed, at times, that of the high-sailing buzzards, for she guessed, miles and miles away, what water-holes were dry and what “tanks” brimmed with water; what trails were broken by landslides since they had last been travelled and where new trails might be found or made; when it was wise to seek shelter because a sand-storm was brewing; where the grass grew thickest and most succulent on far-off hillsides; and so on and on the treasury of her knowledge could be delved in inexhaustibly.

On only one point did he feel that his cleverness might rival hers and that point was the most important of all—­man the Great Destroyer.  She knew him only from a distance whereas had not Alcatraz breathed that dreaded scent close at hand?  Had he not on one unforgetable occasion felt the soft flesh turn to pulp beneath his stamping feet, and heard the breaking of bones?  His nostrils distended at the memory and again he searched the lowlands.

No, there was not a shadow of a place where man might be concealed and that scent could be nothing but a snare and an illusion.  To be sure there were other ways hardly less convenient to the waterhole, but why should he be turned from the easiest way day after day because of this unbodied warning?  He started down the slope.

It brought the grey after him, neighing wildly, but though she circled around him at full speed time after time, he would not pause, and when she attempted to block him he raised his head and pushed her away with the resistless urge of breast and shoulders.  At that she attempted no more forceful persuasion but fell in behind him, still pausing from time to time to send her mournfully persuasive whinny after the obdurate leader until even the bays, usually so blindly docile, grew alarmed and fell back to a huddled grouping half way between Alcatraz and the trailing grey.  It touched his pride sharply, this division of their trust.  Twice he slackened his lope and called to them to hasten and when they responded with only a faint-hearted trot he was forced to mask his impatience.  Coming to a walk he cropped imaginary grasses from time to time and so induced the others to draw nearer.

It was slow work going down the hollow in this way, and hot work, too, but though he often glanced up yearningly towards the wooded hills beyond, he kept to his pretense of carelessness and so managed to hold the mares in a close-bunched group behind him.  In the meantime the scent grew stronger, closer to the ground on that east wind.  Time and again he raised his head and stared earnestly, but it was impossible for any living creature to stalk within hundreds of yards of him without being seen—­whereas that scent spoke of one almost within leaping distance.  Once it seemed to his excited imagination—­as he lowered his head to sniff at a tuft of dead grasses—­that he heard the sound of human breathing.

He snorted the foolish thought into nothingness and after a glance back to make sure that his companions followed, he resolutely stepped out into the very heart of the man-scent.  So closely was that phantom located by the sense of smell that it seemed to Alcatraz he could see the exact spot on the hillside behind a small rock where the ghost must lie.  Yet he disdained to flee from empty air and for all his beating heart he raised his head and walked sedately on.  The danger spot was drifting past on his left when a squeal of fear from the wild grey far in the rear made Alcatraz leap sidewise with catlike suddenness.

Growing by magic from the sand behind the little rock the head and shoulders of a man appeared, his shadow pouring down the sun-whitened slope.  In his hand he swung a rapidly lengthening loop of rope and as his arm went back it knocked off the fellow’s hat and exposed a shock of red hair.  So much Alcatraz saw while the paralysis of fear locked every joint for the tenth part of a second, and deeply as he dreaded the apparition itself he dreaded more the whipping circle of rope.  For had he not seen the dead thing become alive and snakelike in the skilled hand of Manuel Cordova?  The freezing terror relaxed; the sand crunched away under the drive of his rear hoofs as he flung himself forward—­with firm footing to aid he would have slid from beneath the flying danger, but as it was he heard the live rope whisper in the air above his head.

He landed on stiff legs, checked his forward impetus and flung sidewise.  On solid footing he would have dodged successfully; as it was the noose barely clipped past his ear.

As the rope touched his neck, it seemed to Alcatraz that every wound dealt him by the hand of man was suddenly aching and bleeding again, the skin along his flanks quivered where the spurs of Cordova had driven home time and again, and on shoulders and belly and hips there were burning stripes where the quirt had raised its wale.  Most horrible of all, in his mouth came the taste of iron and his own blood where the Spanish bit had wrenched his jaws apart.  Out of the old days he might have remembered the first and bitterest lesson—­that it is folly to pull against a rope—­but now he saw nothing save the fleeing forms of the seven mares and his own freedom vanishing with them.  In his mid-leap the lariat hummed taut, sank in a burning circle into the flesh at the base of his neck, and he was flung to the ground.  No man’s power could have stopped him so short; the cunning enemy had turned a half-hitch around the top of that deep-rooted rock.

He landed, not inert, but shocked out of hysteria into all his old cunning—­that wily savagery which had kept Cordova in fear, ten-fold more terrible since the free life had clothed him with his full strength.  The very impetus of his fall he used to help him whirl to his feet, and as he rose he knew what he must do.  To struggle against the tools of man was always madness and brought only pain as a result; like a good general he determined to end the battle by getting at the root of the enemy’s fire, and wheeling on his hind legs he charged Red Perris.

The first leap revealed the mystery of the man’s appearance.  Behind this rock, which was barely sufficient shelter for his head, he had excavated a pit sufficient to shelter his crouching body and the sand which he removed for this purpose had been spread evenly over the slope so that no suspicion might be created in the most watchful eye.  He had sprung from his concealment and was now working to loosen the half-hitch from the rock.  As the knot came free Alcatraz was turning and now Perris faced the charge with the rope caught in his hand.  What could he do?  There was only one thing, and the stallion saw the heavy revolver bared and levelled at him, a flickering bit of metal.  He knew well what it meant but there was no hope save to rush on; another stride and he would be on that frail creature, tearing with his teeth and crushing with his hoofs.  And then a miracle happened.  The revolver was flung aside, a gleaming arc and a splash of sand where it struck; Red Perris preferred to risk his life rather than end the battle before it was well begun with a bullet.  He crouched over the rope as though he had braced himself to meet the shock of the charging stallion.  But that was not his purpose.  As the stallion rushed on him he darted to one side and the fore hoof with which Alcatraz struck merely slashed his shirt down the back.

A feint had saved him, but Alcatraz was no bull to charge blindly twice.  He checked himself so abruptly that he knocked up a shower of sand, and he turned savagely out of that dust-cloud to end the struggle.  Yet this small, mad creature stood his ground, showed no inclination to flee.  With the rope he was doing strange things, making it spin in swift spirals, close to the ground.  Let him do what he would, his days were ended.  Alcatraz bared his teeth, laid back his ears, and lunged again.  Another miracle!  As his forefeet struck the ground in the midst of one of those wide circles of rope, the red-headed man lunged back, the circle jumped like a living thing and coiled itself around both forefeet, between fetlock and hoof.  When he attempted the next leap his front legs crumbled beneath him.  At the very feet of Red Perris he plunged into the sand.

Once more he whirled to regain his lost footing, but as he turned on his back the rope twisted and whispered above him; the off hind leg was noosed, and then the near one—­Alcatraz lay on his side straining and snorting but utterly helpless.

Of a sudden he ceased all struggle.  About neck and all four hoofs was the burning grip of the rope, so bitterly familiar, and man had once again enslaved him.  Alcatraz relaxed.  Presently there would come a swift volley of curses, then the whir and cut of the whip—­no, for a great occasion such as this the man would choose a large and durable club and beat him across the ribs.  Why not?  Even as he had served Cordova this man of the flaming hair would now serve him.  He was very like Cordova in one thing.  He did not hurry, but first picked up his revolver and replaced it in its holster, having blown the sand from the mechanism as well as he could.  Then he put on his fallen hat and stood back with his hands dropped on his hips and eyed the captive.  For the first time he spoke, and Alcatraz shuddered at the sound of a voice well-nigh as smooth as that of Cordova, with the same well-known ring of fierce exultation.

“God A’mighty, God A’mighty!  They can’t be no hoss like this!  Jim, you’re dreaming.  Rub your fool eyes and wake up!”

He began to walk in a circle about his victim, and Alcatraz shuddered when the conqueror came behind him.  That had been Cordova’s way—­to come to a place where he could not be seen and then strike cruelly and by surprise.  To his unspeakable astonishment, Perris presently leaned over him—­and then deliberately sat down on the shoulder of the chestnut.  Two thoughts flashed through the mind of the stallion; he might heave himself over by a convulsive effort and attempt to crush this insolent devil; or he might jerk his head around and catch Perris with his teeth.  A third and better thought, however, immediately followed—­that bound as he was he would have little chance to reach this elusive will-o’-the-wisp.  He could not repress a quiver of horror and anger, but beyond that he did not stir.

Other liberties were being taken; Cordova in his maddest moments would not have dared so much.  Down the long muscles of his shoulder and upper foreleg went curious and gently prying finger-tips, and where they passed a tingling sensation followed, not altogether unpleasant.  Again beginning on his neck the hand trailed down beneath his mane and at the same time the voice was murmuring:  “Oh beauty!  Oh beauty!”

The heart of Alcatraz swelled.  He had felt his first caress.