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
dreamy panorama in the moonshine. One feature was clear, and that was a
broad looping of silver among the hills, a river with slender
tributaries dodging swiftly down to it from either side. Alcatraz looked
with a swelling heart, thinking of the white-hot deserts which he had
known all his life. The wind which lifted his mane and cooled his hot
body carried up, also, the delicious fragrance of the evergreens and it
seemed to Alcatraz that he had come in view of a promised land. Surely
he had dreamed of it on many a day in burning, dusty corrals or in
oven-like sheds.
The descent was far less precipitous than the climb and far shorter to
the plateau.
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