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 flying up behind from the quickness of his turn.  Straight at the throat of the chestnut he dived and his teeth closed on the throat of Alcatraz just where the neck narrows beneath the jaw.  His superior height enabled Alcatraz to rear and fling himself clear, but his throat was bleeding when he landed on all fours dancing with rage and the sting of his wounds.  Yet he refrained from rushing; he had been in too many a fight to charge blindly.

The black, however, had tasted victory, and came again with a snort of eagerness.  It was the thing for which Alcatraz had been waiting and he played a trick which he had learned long before from a cunning old gelding who, on a day, had given him a bitter fight.  He pitched back, as though he were about to rear to meet the charge, but when his fore-feet were barely clear of the ground he rocked down again, whirled, and lashed out with his heels.

Had they landed fairly the battle would have ended in that instant, but the black was cat-footed indeed, and he swerved in time to save his head.  Even so one flashing heel had caught his shoulder and ripped it open like a knife.  And they both sprang away, ready for the next clash.  The grey mare who had run so gallantly at the hip of the leader now approached and stood close by with pricking ears.  Alcatraz bared his teeth as he glanced aside at her.  No doubt if he were knocked sprawling she would rush in to help her lord and master finish the enemy.  That gave Alcatraz a second problem—­to fight the stallion without turning his back on the treacherous mare.