stories of the charmed life and the tales he had mocked at before now
became possible truths. He caught up his gun to make sure, but when
his left hand slipped under the barrel to the balance and the butt of
the gun pulled into the hollow of his shoulder, he became of rocklike
steadiness. Swinging the gun to the left he caught Alcatraz full in
the readly circle of the sights and over his set teeth the lips curled
in a smile; the trail had ended! The slightest movement of his finger
would beckon the life out of that marauder, but as one who tastes the
wine slowly, inhales its bouquet, places the vintage, even so Red
Perris delayed to taste the fruition of his work. Pivoted on his
left elbow, he swung the rifle with frictionless ease and kept the
galloping stallion steadily in the center of the sight.

He smiled grimly now at those fables of the charmed life and drew
a bead just over the heart. The chestnut was very near. Along the
glorious slope of his shoulder Perris saw the long muscles playing
with every stride, and what strides they were! He floated rather than
galloped; his hoofs barely flicked the ground, and it seemed to Jim
Perris a shameful thing to smash that mechanism. He did not love
horses; he was raised in a land where they were too strictly articles
of use. But even as a machine he saw in Alcatraz perfection.

Not the body, then. He would drive the bullet home into the brain, the
cunning brain which had conceived and executed all the mischief the
chestnut had worked. Along the shining neck, so imperiously arched,
Perris swung the sights and rested his head, at last, just below the
ears with the forelock blown back between them by the wind of running.
Slowly his finger closed on the trigger. It seemed that in the silence
Alcatraz had found a signal of danger for now he swung that imperious
head about and looked full at Red Perris. By his own act he had