mmate terror can make a man run, seemed to be racing on a
treadmill--literally standing still.

The picket fence which set off the back yard of the hotel gave the man
an instant of delay--a terribly vital instant, indeed, that seemed to
Marianne to contain long, long minutes. But here he was over and
running again. In her dread she wondered why he was not shrieking for
aid, but the face of Cordova was rigid--a nightmare mask!

Twenty steps, now, to the hotel, and surely there was still hope. No,
for Alcatraz sailed across the pickets with a bound that cut in two the
distance still dividing him from his master. It had all happened,
perhaps, within the space of three breaths. Now Marianne leaned out of
the window and screamed her warning, for the faded chestnut was on the
very heels of the Mexican. He raised his contorted face at her cry, then
threw up both his arms to her in a gesture she could never forget.

"Shoot!" yelled Cordova. "Amigo, amigo, shoot! Quick--"

Then Alcatraz struck him!

Half the bones in his body must have been broken by the impact. It spun
him over and over in the dust, yet as the impetus of the chestnut
carried him far past, Cordova struggled to his feet and attempted to
flee again. Alas, it was only a step! His left leg crumpled under him.
He toppled sideways, still wriggling and twisting onwards through the
dirt--and then Alcatraz struck him again.

This time is was no blind rush. Back and forth, up and down, he crossed
and recrossed, wheeled and reared and stamped, until his one white
stocking was crimsoned and spurts of red flew out and turned black in
the dust.

The horror which had choked her relaxed and Marianne shrieked again. It
was that second cry which saved a faint spark of life for Cordova for at
the sound the stallion leaped sidewise from the body of his victim,
lifted his head towards the half fainting girl in the window, and
trumpeted a great neigh of defiance. Still neighing he swerved away into
a gallop, cleared the fence a second time, and fled from view.

CHAPTER VI

FREEDOM

Towards the Eagles, rolling up like wind-blown smoke, Alcatraz fled,
cleared one by one the fences about the small fields near Glosterville,
and so came at last to the broader domains under the foothills. Here, on
a rise of ground, he halted for the first time and looked back.

The heat waves, glimmering up endlessly, obscured Glosterville, but the
wind, from some hidden house among the hi