and rank and others where it was a sweeter and finer growth; but both had their places in his diet and must be remembered so Alcatraz tried to file them away in his mind.  But who could remember single jewels in a great treasure?  He was like a child chasing butterflies and continually lured from the pursuit of one to that of another still brighter.  So he came in his kingly progress to the first blot on the landscape, the first bar, the first hindrance.

Sinuous and swift curving as a snake it twisted over hilltops and dipped across hollows, three streaks of silver light one above the other, and endless.  The ears of Alcatraz flattened.  He knew barb-wire fences of old and he knew they meant man and domination of man.  The scars of whip and spur stung him afresh.  The old sullen hatred rose in him.  Those three elusive lines of light were stronger than he, he knew, just as the frail body of a man contained a mysterious strength far greater than his.  He turned his head across the wind and galloped beside the new-strung fence for ten breathless minutes.  Then he paused, panting.  Still running endless before him and behind was the fence and now he saw a checking of similar fences across the meadows to his right.  More than that, he saw a group of fat cattle browzing, and just beyond were horses in a pasture.

Alcatraz slipped backwards and sideways till he was out of sight and then galloped over the hill until he came to a grove of trees at the top.  Here he paused to continue his examination from shelter.  The fence was the work of man, the cattle and horses were the possessions of man, and far off to the left, out of a grove of trees, rose the smoke which spoke of the presence of man himself.  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.  He kept on fairly steadily, nibbling in the bunch-grass as he went, now trotting a little, now cantering lightly across a stretch barren of forage.  So he came, just after noonday, down-wind from the scent of horses.