every detail, and every detail an item of perfect beauty. She gasped her
admiration and astonishment; mustang he might be, but the short line of
the back above and the long line below, the deep set of the shoulders,
the length of neck, the Arab perfection of head, would have allowed him
to pass unquestioned muster among a group of thoroughbreds, and a picked
group at that. He turned, at that instant, and galloped a short distance
along the crest, neighing again, and then paused like an expectant dog,
with one forefoot raised, a white-stockinged forefoot. Marianne gripped
the glass hard and then dropped it. By the liquid smoothness of that
gallop, by the white-stockinged forefoot, by something about his head,
and above all by what she knew of his cunning, she had recognized
Alcatraz. And where, in the first glimpse, she had been about to warn
the men not to shoot this peerless beauty, she now dropped the glass
with the memory of the trampling of Manuel Cordova rushing back across
her mind.

"It's Alcatraz!" she cried. "It's that chestnut I told you of at
Glosterville, Mr. Hervey. Oh, shoot and shoot to kill. He's a murderer--
not a horse!"

That injunction was not needed. The rifle spoke from the shoulder of
Shorty, but the stallion neither fell nor fled, and his challenging
neigh rang faintly down to them.

"Mind the mares!" shrilled Marianne suddenly. "They're starting for
him!!"

In fact, it seemed as though the report of the rifle had started the
Coles horses towards their late companion They went forward at a
high-stepping trot as horses will when their minds are not quite made up