It was a goodly sight to Alcatraz.  Moreover, his heart leaped strangely, as it always did when he saw horses in full gallop.  Perhaps they were striving to test his speed of foot before they admitted him to their company.  In that case the answer was soon given.  He sent his call after them, bidding them watch a real horse run, then overtook them in one dizzy burst of sprinting.  His rush carried him not only up to them but among them.  Two or three youngsters swerved aside with frightened snorts, but as he came up behind a laboring mare she paused in her flight to let drive with both heels.  Alcatraz barely escaped the danger with a sidestep light as a dancer’s and shortened his gallop.

He could not punish the mare for her impudence; besides, he needed time to rearrange his thoughts.  Why should they flee from a companion who intended no harm?  It was a great puzzle.  In the meantime, keeping easily at the heels of the wild horses, he noted that they were holding their pace better than any cowponies he had ever seen running.  From the oldest mare to the youngest foal they seemed to have one speed afoot.

A neigh from the black leader made the herd scatter on every side like fire in stubble.  Alcatraz halted to catch the meaning of this new maneuver and saw the black approaching at a high-stepping trot as one determined to explore a danger but ready to instantly flee if it seemed a serious threat.  His gaze was fixed not on Alcatraz but on the far horizon where the hills became a blue mist rolling softly against the sky.  He seemed to make up his mind, presently, that nothing would follow the chestnut out of the distance and he began to move about Alcatraz 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