raz in
a rapid gallop, constantly narrowing his circle.

Alcatraz turned constantly to meet him, whinnying a friendly greeting,
but the black paid not the slightest heed to these overtures. At length
he came to a quivering stand twenty yards away, head up, ears back, a
very statue of an angry and proud horse. Obviously it was a challenge,
but Alcatraz was too happy in his new-found brothers to think of battle.
He ducked his head a little and pawed the ground lightly, a horse's
age-old manner of expressing amicable intentions. But there was nothing
amicable in the black leader. He reared a little and came down lightly
on his forefeet, his weight gathered on his haunches as though he were
preparing to charge, and at this unmistakable evidence of ill-will,
Alcatraz snorted and grew alert.

If it came to fighting he was more than at home. He was a master. More
than one corral gate he had cunningly worked ajar, and more than one
flimsy barn wall he had broken down with his leaning shoulder, and more
than one fence he had leaped to get at the horses beyond. With anger
rising in him he took stock of the opponent. The black lacked a good
inch of his own height but in substance more than made up for the
deficiency. He was a stalwart eight-year old, muscled like a Hercules,
with plenty of bone to stand his weight; and his eyes, glittering
through the tangle of forelock, gave him an air of savage cunning.
Decidedly here was a foeman worthy of his steel, thought Alcatraz. He
looked about him. There stood the mares and the horses ranged in a loose
semi-circle, waiting and watching; only the colts, ignorant of what was
to come, had begun to frolic together or bother their mothers with a
savage pretense of battle. Alcatraz saw one solid old bay topple her
offspring with a side-swing of her head. She wanted an unobstructed view
of the fight.

His interest in this by-play nearly proved his undoing for while his
head was turned he heard a rushing of hoofs and barely had time to throw
himself to one side as the black flashed by him. Alcatraz turned and
reared to beat the insolent stranger into the earth but he found that
the leader was truly different from the sluggish horses of men. A
hundred wild battles had taught the black every trick of tooth and heel;
and in the thick of the fight he carried his weight with the agility of
a cat: Alcatraz had not yet swung himself fairly back on his haunches
when the black was upon him, the dust f