contented. All his old life lay low beneath him in a thicker air and in
a deeper night. He had climbed out of it to a lonely height, perhaps,
but a free one. The wind, coming off the mountain top, curled his tail
along his flank. He turned and put his head into it, already refreshed
for more climbing. There was a strange scent in that wind, a rank, keen
odor that would have stopped him instantly had he been wiser in the life
of the wilderness. As it was, he trotted on through a skirting of
shrubbery and on the verge of a clearing was stopped by a snarl that
rolled out of the ground at his feet. Then he saw a dead deer on the
ground and over it a great tawny creature. One paw lay on the flank of
its prey; the bloody muzzle was just above.

There is no greater coward than the puma. Ordinarily she would have
hesitated before attacking the grown horse, but the surprise made her
desperate. She sprang even as Alcatraz whirled for flight, and in
whirling he saw that there was no escape from the leap of this monster
with the yawning teeth. He kicked high and hard, eleven hundred pounds
of seasoned muscle concentrated in the drive. The blow would have
smashed in the side of a bull. One hoof glanced off, but the other
struck fair and full between the eyes of the mountain-lion. The great
cat spun backwards, screeching, but Alcatraz saw no more than the fall.
He fled up the mountain with fear of death lightening his strides,
regardless of footing, crashing through underbrush, and came to the end
of his hysterical flight at the crest of the slope.

There he paused, shaking and weak, but the mountain top was bare of
covert, and scanning it eagerly through the treacherous moonlight he saw
there was no immediate danger. Down the Western slopes he saw a
fairyland for horses. Far beyond rose a second range nearly as lofty as
the peak on which he stood, but in between tumbled rolling ground, a