Alcatraz

PARTNERS

The recovery was no miracle.  The strangling coil of rope which shut off the wind of Alcatraz had also kept any water from passing into his lungs, and as the air now began to come back and the reviving oxygen reached his blood, his recovery was amazingly rapid.  Before Perris had ceased wondering at the first audible breath the eyes of Alcatraz were lighted with flickering intelligence; then a snort of terror showed that he realized his nearness to the Great Enemy.  His very panic acted as a thrillingly powerful restorative.  By the time Perris got weakly to his feet, Alcatraz was lunging up the river bank scattering gravel and small rocks behind him.

And Perris made no attempt to throw the rope again.  He allowed it to lie limp and wet on the gravel, but turning to watch that magnificent body, shining from the river, he saw the lines of Hervey’s hunters coming swinging across the plain, riding to the limit of the speed of their horses.

This was the end, then.  In ten minutes, or less, they would be on him, and he without a gun in his hands!

As though he saw the same approaching line of riders, Alcatraz whirled on the edge of the sand, but he did not turn to flee.  Instead, he lifted his head and turned his bright eyes on the Great Enemy, and stood there trembling at their nearness!  The heart of Perris leaped.  A great hope which he dared not frame in thought rushed through his mind, and he stepped slowly forward, his hand extended, his voice caressing.  The chestnut winced one step back, and then waited, snorting.  There he waited, trembling with fear, chained by curiosity, and ready to leap away in arrowy flight should the sun wink on the tell-tale brightness of steel or the noosed rope dart whispering through the air above him.  But there was no such sign of danger.  The man came steadily on with his right hand stretched out palm up in the age-old token of amity, and as he approached he kept talking.  Strange power was in that voice to enter the ears of the stallion and find a way to his heart of hearts.  The fierce and joyous battle-note which he had heard on the day of the great fight was gone and in its place was a fiber of piercing gentleness.  It thrilled Alcatraz as the touch of the man’s fingers had thrilled him on another day.

Now he was very near, yet Perris did not hurry, did not change the quiet of his words.  By the nearness his face was become the dominant thing.  What was there between the mountains so terrible and so gentle, so full of awe, of wisdom, and of beauty, as this human face?  Behind the eyes the outlaw horse saw the workings of that mystery which had haunted his still evenings in the desert—­the mind.

Far away the grey mare was neighing plaintively and the scared cowpony trailed in the distance wondering why these free creatures should come so close to man, the enslaver; but to Alcatraz the herd was no more than a growth of trees; nothing existed under the sky saving that hand ceaselessly outstretched towards him, and the steady murmur of the voice.

He began to wonder:  what would happen if he waited until the finger tips were within a hair’s-breadth of his nose?  Surely there would be no danger, for even if the Great Enemy slid onto his back again he could not stay, weak as Red Perris now was.

Alcatraz winced, but without moving his feet; and when he straightened the finger tips touched the velvet of his nose.  He stamped and snorted to frighten the hunter away but the hand moved dauntlessly high and higher—­it rested between his eyes—­it passed across his head, always with that faint tingle of pleasure trailing behind the touch; and the voice was saying in broken tones:  “Some damn fools say they ain’t a God!  Some damn fools!  Something for nothing.  That’s what He gives!  Steady, boy:  steady!”

Between perfect fear and perfect pleasure, the stallion shuddered.  Now the Great Enemy was beside him with a hand slipping down his neck.  Why did he not swerve and race away?  What power chained him to the place?  He jerked his head about and caught the shoulder of Perris in his teeth.  He could crush through muscles and sinews and smash the bone.  But the teeth of Alcatraz did not close for the hunter made no sign of fear or pain.

“You’re considerable of an idiot, Alcatraz, but you don’t know no better,” the voice was saying.  “That’s right, let go that hold.  In the old days I’d of had my rope on you quicker’n a wink.  But what good in that?  The hoss I love ain’t a down-headed, mean-hearted man-killer like you used to be; it’s the Alcatraz that I’ve seen running free here in the Valley of the Eagles.  And if you come with me, you come free and you stay free.  I don’t want to set no brand on you.  If you stay it’s because you like me, boy; and when you want to leave the corral gate will be sure open.  Are you coming along?”

The fingers of that gentle hand had tangled in the mane of Alcatraz, drawing him softly forward.  He braced his feet, snorting, his ears back.  Instantly the pressure on his mane ceased.  Alcatraz stepped forward.

“By God,” breathed the man.  “It’s true!  Alcatraz, old hoss, d’you think I’d ever of tried to make a slave out of you if I’d guessed that I could make you a partner?”

Behind them, the rattle of volleying hoofs was sweeping closer.  The rain had ceased.  The air was a perfect calm, and the very grunt of the racing horses was faintly audible and the cursing of the men as they urged their mounts forward.  Towards that approaching fear, Alcatraz turned his head.  They came as though they would run him into the river.  But what did it all mean?  So long as one man stood beside him, he was shielded from the enmity of all other men.  That had been true even in the regime of the dastardly Cordova.

“Steady!” gasped Red Perris.  “They’re coming like bullets, Alcatraz, old timer!  Steady!”

One hand rested on the withers, the other on the back of the chestnut, and he raised himself gingerly up.  Under the weight the stallion shrank catwise, aside and down.  But there was no wrench of a curb in his mouth, no biting of the cinches.  In the old days of his colthood, a barelegged boy used to come into the pasture and jump on his bare back.  His mind flashed back to that—­the bare, brown legs.  That was before he had learned that men ride with leather and steel.  He waited, holding himself strongly on leash, ready to turn loose his whole assortment of tricks—­but Perris slipped into place almost as lightly as that dimly remembered boy in the pasture.

To the side, that line of rushing riders was yelling and waving hats.  And now the light winked and glimmered on naked guns.

“Go!” whispered Perris at his ear.  “Alcatraz!”

And the flat of his hand slapped the stallion on the flank.  Was not that the old signal out of the pasture days, calling for a gallop?

He started into a swinging canter.  And a faint, half-choked cry of pleasure from the lips of his rider tingled in his ears.  For your born horseman reads his horse by the first buoyant moment, and what Red Jim Perris read of the stallion surpassed his fondest dreams.  A yell of wonder rose from Hervey and his charging troop.  They had seen Red Jim come battered and exhausted from his struggle with the stallion the day before, and now he sat upon the bareback of the chestnut—­a miracle!

“Shoot!” yelled Hervey.  “Shoot for the man.  You can’t hit the damned hoss!”

In answer, a volley blazed, but what they had seen was too much for the nerves of even those hardy hunters and expert shots.  The volley sang about the ears of Perris, but he was unscathed, while he felt Alcatraz gather beneath him and sweep into a racing pace, his ears flat, his neck extended.  For he knew the meaning of that crashing fire.  Fool that he had been not to guess.  He who had battled with him the day before, but battled without man’s ordinary tools of torture; he who had saved him this very day from certain death in the water; this fellow of the flaming red hair, was in truth so different from other men, that they hunted him, they hated him, and therefore they were sending their waspish and invisible messengers of death after him.  For his own safety, for the life of the man on his back, Alcatraz gave up his full speed.

And Perris bowed low along the stallion’s neck and cheered him on.  It was incredible, this thing that was happening.  They had reached top speed, and yet the speed still increased.  The chestnut seemed to settle towards the earth as his stride lengthened.  He was not galloping.  He was pouring himself over the ground with an endless succession of smooth impulses.  The wind of that running became a gale.  The blown mane of Alcatraz whipped and cut at the face of Perris, and still the chestnut drove swifter and swifter.

He was cutting down the bank of the river which had nearly seen his death a few moments before, striving to slip past the left flank of Hervey’s men, and now the foreman, yelling his orders, changed his line of battle, and the cowpunchers swung to the left to drive Alcatraz into the very river.  The change of direction unsettled their aim.  It is hard at best to shoot from the back of a running horse at an object in swift motion; it is next to impossible when sharp orders are being rattled forth.  They fired as they galloped, but their shots flew wild.

In the meantime, they were closing the gap between them and the river bank to shut off Alcatraz, but for every foot they covered the chestnut covered two, it seemed.  He drove like a red lightning bolt, with the rider flattened on his back, shaking his fist back at the pursuers.

“Pull up!” shouted Lew Hervey, in sudden realization that Alcatraz would slip through the trap.  “Pull up!  And shoot for Perris!  Pull up!”

They obeyed, wrenching their horses to a halt, and as they drew them up, Red Jim, with a yell of triumph, straightened on the back of the flying horse and waved back to them.  The next instant his shout of defiance was cut short by the bark of three rifles, as Hervey and Shorty and Little Joe, having halted their horses, pitched their guns to their shoulders and let blaze after the fugitive.  There was a sting along the shoulder of Perris as though a red hot knife had slashed him; a bullet had grazed the skin.

Ah, but they would have a hard target to strike, from now on!  The trick which Alcatraz had learned in his own flights from the hunters he now brought back into play.  He began to swerve from side to side as he raced.

Another volley roared from the cursing cowpunchers behind them, but every bullet flew wide as the chestnut swerved.

“Damn him!” yelled Lew Hervey.  “Has the hoss put the charm on the hide of that skunk, too?”

For in the fleeing form of Red Perris he saw all his hopes eluding his grasp.  With Red Jim escaped and his promise to the rancher unfulfilled, what would become of his permanent hold on Oliver Jordan?  Ay, and Red Jim, once more in safety and mounted on that matchless horse, would swoop down on the Valley of the Eagles and strike to kill, again, again, and again!

No wonder there was an agony shrill in the voice of the foreman as he shouted:  “Once more!”

Up went the shining barrels of the rifles, followed the swerving form of the horseman for a moment, and then, steadied to straight, gleaming lines, they fired at the same instant, as though in obedience to an unspoken order.

And the form of Red Perris was knocked forward on the back of Alcatraz!

Some place in his body one of those bullets had struck.  They saw him slide far to one side.  They saw, while they shouted in triumph, that Alcatraz instinctively shortened his pace to keep his slipping burden from falling.

“He’s done!” yelled Hervey, and shoving his rifle back in its holster, he spurred again in the pursuit.

But Red Perris was not done.  Scrambling with his legs, tugging with his arms, he drew himself into position and straightway collapsed along the back of Alcatraz with both hands interwoven in the mane of the horse.

And the stallion endured it!  A shout of amazement burst from the foreman and his men.  Alcatraz had tossed up his head, sent a ringing neigh of defiance floating behind him, and then struck again into his matchless, smooth flowing gallop!

Perhaps it was not so astonishing, after all, as some men could have testified who have seen horses that are devils under spur and saddle become lambs when the steel and the leather they have learned to dread are cast away.

But all Alcatraz could understand, as his mind grasped vaguely towards the meaning of the strange affair, was that the strong, agile power on his back had been suddenly destroyed.  Red Perris was now a limp and hanging weight, something no longer to be feared, something to be treated, at will, with contempt.  The very voice was changed and husky as it called to him, close to his ear.  And he no longer dared to dodge, because at every swerve that limp burden slid far to one side and dragged itself back with groans of agony.  Then something warm trickled down over his shoulder.  He turned his head.  From the breast of the rider a crimson trickle was running down over the chestnut hair, and it was blood.  With the horror of it he shuddered.

He must gallop gently, now, at a sufficient distance to keep the rifles from speaking behind him, but slowly and softly enough to keep the rider in his place.  He swung towards the mares, running, frightened by the turmoil, in the distance.  But a hand on his neck pressed him back in a different direction and down into the trail which led, eventually, to the ranch of Oliver Jordan.  Let it be, then, as the man wished.  He had known how to save a horse from the Little Smoky.  He would be wise enough to keep them both safe even from other men, and so, along the trail towards the ranch, the chestnut ran with a gait as gentle as the swing and light fall of a ground swell in mid-ocean.