Alcatraz stood off and eyed them in disgust.  When he was a yearling, he felt, he had known more than those big, stupid, beautiful creatures.  But plainly they wanted to get out with him.  A wild horse is to the tame what the adventurous traveller is to the quiet man who builds a home, and from the grey mare and Alcatraz the six were learning many things.  The scent of the open desert was on them, the sweat of hard running had dried on their hides, their heads were recklessly proud; and this tall stallion jumped the fence as though there had never been men who made laws which well-trained horses must not transgress.  Plainly he wanted them to come out.  They were very willing to go for a romp but they knew nothing about jumping, as yet, and all they could do was to show their eagerness to be out for a run by milling up and down the fence.

If that were the case, there were other ways of opening corrals and Alcatraz knew them all.  He tried the fence with his shoulder, leaning all his weight.  More than once he had smashed time-rotted fences in this manner, but he found that these posts were new and well tamped and the boards were strongly nailed.  He gave up that effort and went about looking for a gate.  Gates were not hard to find.  A gate is that part of a fence under which many tracks and many scents go; it is also a section which swings a little and rattles annoyingly in a wind.  Upon the top board of that section there is sure to be thick scent of man where his hands have fallen.  Alcatraz found the gate.  Under the weight of his shoulder it creaked but did not give.  He took the top rail in his teeth, while the mares stood back, wondering, in a high-headed semi-circle and the grey kept nudging at his flank, saying very plainly:  “Enough of this nonsense.  These gangling creatures, all legs and foolishness, are not of our kind, O my master.  Let us be gone!” But Alcatraz heeded her not.  He shook the gate back and forth.

There are three kinds of fastenings for corral gates.  One of them squeaks and strains when it is pulled against.  It is made of wire that leaves a bitter taste of iron and rust in the mouth when it is touched.  Wire is often very difficult but with teeth and prehensile upper lip it may usually be worked up high, and finally it will fall over the top of one of the posts with a rattle, and then the gate is open.  Another kind of fastening rattles very much when the gate is shaken.  This means that a loose board unites gates and post, running in a slot, and the only way to handle such a gate is to take the loose board by the end and draw it back as far as possible.  Then the gate always swings open of its own accord.  There is a third kind of fastening.  Manuel Cordova used it.  It consists of a padlock and chain and where this is found one had better leave the cursed thing untried for it will never be broken or removed.

By the first shake of the gate and the corresponding rattle Alcatraz knew that the sliding board fastened it.  He sniffed for it and found it very easily, for always the latch-board is the one heaviest with the man-scent.  He found it and worked it easily back.  It caught on a nail.  He tugged again, and as he tugged he quivered at the sound of a human voice and shrank as though the familiar whip of Cordova had cut him.