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--wit