The chestnut shivered as though he
were shaking cold water off his hide, and then unreasoning fury gripped
him. For here was his paradise, his Promised Land, pre-empted by the
Great Enemy!
He stayed for a long moment gazing, and then turned reluctantly and fled
like one pursued back by the way he had come. He got beyond the fence in
the course of half an hour, but still he kept on. He began to feel that
as long as he galloped on land which was pleasant to him it would be
pleasant to man also. So he kept steadily on his way, leaping the
brooks. Into the river he cast himself and swam to the farther shore.
There was an instant change beyond that bank. The valley opened like a
fan. The handle of it was the green, well-watered plateau into which he
had first descended, but now it spread in raw colored desert, cut up by
ragged hills here and there, and extending on either side to mountains
purple-blue with distance.
With the water dripping from his belly, Alcatraz twinked a farewell
glance to the green country behind him and set his face towards the
desert. It was not so hard to leave the pleasant meadows. Now that he
knew they were man-owned there was a taint in their beauty, and here on
the sands of the desert with only dusty bunch-grass to eat and muddy
waterholes to drink from, he was at least free from the horror of the
enemy.
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