They were his
kind, they were his people, they had accepted his rule; and now he was
emptyhearted, a king without a people. The grey mare, the fleetest and
the wisest of them all, remained; but she was only a reminder of his
vanished glory.
Remembering how Cordova had been served, might he not find a way of
harming those men even as they had harmed him? He slackened to a trot
and finally halted. His companion kept on until he neighed. Then she
came obediently enough but swinging her head up and down to indicate her
intense disapproval of this halt. When Alcatraz actually started back
towards the place where the cowpunchers had dropped the pursuit, she
threw herself across his way, striving to turn him with bared teeth and
flirting heels.
He merely kept a weaving course to avoid her, his head high and his ears
back, which was a manner the mare had never seen in him before; she
could only tell that she was less than nothing to him. Once she strove
to draw back by running a little distance west and then turning and
calling him but her whinny made him not so much as shake his head. At
length she surrendered and sullenly took up his trail.
He roved swiftly across the hollows; he sneaked up to every commanding
rise as though he feared the guns of men might be just beyond the crest
and these tactics continued until they came in view of the small row of
black figures riding against the sunset.
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