tains for she was
still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained a purposeful,
steady, lope. It was far other with the stallion. He kept at her side
with his gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace and the
shelter from man which they might find in the blue valleys of yonder
mountains. His mind was back at the slaughter of Mingo Lake hearing the
crackle of the rifles and seeing his comrades fall and die. It was
nothing that he had known the band only since morning. They were his
kind, they were his people, they had accepted his rule; and now he was
emptyhearted, a king without a people. The grey mare, the fleetest and
the wisest of them all, remained; but she was only a reminder of his
vanished glory.

Remembering how Cordova had been served, might he not find a way of
harming those men even as they had harmed him? He slackened to a trot
and finally halted. His companion kept on until he neighed. Then she
came obediently enough but swinging her head up and down to indicate her
intense disapproval of this halt. When Alcatraz actually started back
towards the place where the cowpunchers had dropped the pursuit, she
threw herself across his way, striving to turn him with bared teeth and
flirting heels.

He merely kept a weaving course to avoid her, his head high and his ears
back, which was a manner the mare had never seen in him before; she
could only tell that she was less than nothing to him. Once she strove
to draw back by running a little distance west and then turning and
calling him but her whinny made him not so much as shake his head. At
length she surrendered and sullenly took up his trail.

He roved swiftly across the hollows; he sneaked up to every commanding
rise as though he feared the guns of men might be just beyond the crest
and these tactics continued until they came in view of the small row of
black figures riding against the sunset. The grey halted at once,
rearing and snorting, for the sight brought again that hateful smell of
blood but her leader moved quietly after the cowpunchers; he was taking
the man-trail!

It was arduous work, frisking from one point of vantage to another,
never knowing when the Great Enemy might turn. They could make death
speak from the distance of half a mile; under shelter of the hills they
might even double back to close range; they might be luring him by the
pretense that he was unseen.

In such maneuvers the mare was a dangerous encumbrance, for t