In fact, it seemed as though the report of the rifle had started the Coles horses towards their late companion They went forward at a high-stepping trot as horses will when their minds are not quite made up about their course.  Now, in obedience to shouted orders from Hervey, the cowpunchers split into two groups and slipped away on either side to head the truants; Marianne herself, spurring as hard as she could after Hervey, heard the foreman groaning:  “By God, d’you ever see a hoss stand up under gunfire like that?”

For as they galloped, the men were pumping in shot after shot wildly, and Alcatraz did not stir!  The firing merely served to rouse the mares from trot to gallop, and from gallop to run.  For the first time Marianne mourned their speed.  They glided away as though the horses of the cowpunchers were running fetlock deep in mud; they shot up the slope towards the distant stallion like six bright arrows.

Then came Hervey’s last, despairing effort:  “Pull up!  Shorty!  Slim!  Pull up and try to drop that devil!”

They obeyed; Marianne, racing blindly ahead, heard a clanguor of shots behind her and riveted her eyes on the chestnut, waiting for him to fall.  But he did not fall.  He seemed to challenge the bullets with his lordly head and in another moment he was wheeling with the mares about him.  Even in her anguish, Marianne noted with a thrill of wonder that though the Coles horses were racing at the top of their speed, the stallion overtook them instantly and shot into the lead.  For that matter, handicapped with a wretched ride, staggering weak from underfeeding, he had been good enough to beat them in Glosterville, and now he was transformed by rich pasture and glorious freedom.

The whole group disappeared, and when she reached the crest in turn, she saw them streaking far off, hopelessly beyond pursuit, and in the rear labored a grey mare, sadly outrun.  Then, as she drew rein, with the mare heaving and swaying from exhaustion beneath her, she remembered the words of Lew Hervey:  “It’ll take ten years to get the chestnut!” Marianne dropped her face in her hands and burst into tears.

It was only a momentary surrender.  When she turned back to join the downheaded men on the home-trail—­for it was worse than useless to follow Alcatraz on such jaded horses—­Marianne had rallied to continue the fight.  Ten years to capture Alcatraz and the mares he led?  She swept the forms of the cowpunchers with one of those all-embracing glances of which few great men and all excited women are capable.  Yes, old age would capture Alcatraz before such men as these.  For this trail there was needed a spirit as much superior to other men in tireless endurance and in speed as Alcatraz was superior to other horses.  There was needed a man who stood among his fellows as Alcatraz had stood on the hillcrest, defiant, lordly, and free.  And as the thought drove home in her, Marianne uttered a little cry of triumph.  All in a breath she had it.  Red Perris was the man!