The heat waves, glimmering up endlessly, obscured Glosterville, but the
wind, from some hidden house among the hills, bore to him wood-smoke
scents with a mingling of the abhorrent odors of man. It made many an
old scar of spur-gore and biting whiplash tingle; it was a background of
pain which was like seasoning for the new delight of freedom.

As though there was a poundage of joy and additional muscle in
self-mastery, the frame of the chestnut filled, his neck arched, and
there came into his eyes that gleam which no man can describe and which
for lack of words he calls the light of the wild.

Fear, to be sure, was still with him; would ever be with him, for the
thought of man followed like galloping horses surrounding him, but what
a small shadow was that in the sunshine of this new existence! His life
had been the bitterness of captivity since Cordova took in part payment
of a drunken gambling debt a sickly foal out of an old thoroughbred
mare. The sire was unknown, and Cordova, disgusted at having to accept
this wretched horseflesh in place of money, had beaten the six months'
old colt soundly and turned it loose in the pasture. There followed a
brief season of happiness in the open pasture but when the new grass
came, short and thick and sweet and crisp under tooth, Cordova came by
the pasture and saw his yearling flirting away from the fastest of the
older horses with a stretch gallop that amazed the Mexican. He leaned a
moment on the fence watching with glittering eyes and then he passed
into a dream. At the end of the dream he took Alcatraz out of the
pasture and into the stable. That had been to Alcatraz, like the first
calamity falling on Job, the beginning of sorrow and for three years and
more he had endured not in patience but with an abiding hatred. For a
great hatred is a great strength, and the hatred for Cordova made the
chestnut big of heart to wait. He had learned to season his days with