d
selected this as his own prize his men dared not shoot.

It was a strange and beautiful thing to see that king of horses--sweep
back around the slowest of his mustangs, shake his head at the barking
guns, and then circle forward again as though he would show the laggard
what running should be. The cowpunchers could have shot him as he veered
back; they could have salted him with lead as he flashed broadside, but
the orders of their chief restrained them. Lew Hervey's lightest word
had a weight with them.

However, before and behind the leader of the herd their guns did deadly
work. Brood mares, stallions young and old, even the foals were dropped.
It was horrible work to the hardest of them but this horseflesh was
useless. Too many times they had seen mustangs taken and ridden and when
they were not hopeless outlaws they became broken-spirited and useless,
as though their strength lay in their freedom. With that gone they were
valueless even as slaves of men.

Before the slaughter ended, young or old there was not a horse left in
the band of Alcatraz save the grey mare far ahead. She was already
beyond range, and as the last of the fleeing horses pitched heavily
forward and lay still with oddly sprawling limbs, old Bud Seymour drew
rein and shoved his rifle back into the long holster.

"Now, look!" he called, as his companions pulled up beside him. "That
grey is fast as a streak--but look! look!"

For the red-chestnut was bounding away in pursuit of his last companion
with a winged gallop. It seemed that the wind caught him up and buoyed
him from stride to stride, and the cowpunchers with hungry, burning eyes
watched without a word until the grey and the chestnut blurred on the
horizon and dipped out of view together. The spell was broken in the
same instant by a stream of profanity floating up from the rear. It was
Lew Hervey approaching and swearing his mightiest.

"But I dunno," said Bud Seymour softly. "I feel kind of glad that Lew
missed."

He glanced sharply at his companions for fear they might laugh at this
childish weakness, but there was no laughter and by their starved eyes
he knew that every one of them was riding over the horizon in
imagination, on the back of the chestnut.

CHAPTER IX

THE STAMPEDE

The grey mare made no effort to draw away when Alcatraz sprinted up
beside her. She gave him not so much as a toss of the head or a swish of
the tail but kept her gaze on the far Western moun