The chase now was close and all down-hill for the watchers.  Silvermane twinkled in and out among the cedars, and suddenly stopped short on the rim.  He wheeled and coursed away toward the crags, and vanished.  But soon he reappeared, for Billy had cut across and faced him about.  Again he struck the level stretch.  Dave was there in front of him.  He shot away to the left, and flashed through the glades beyond.  The brothers saved their steeds, content to keep him cornered in that end of the plateau.  Then August spurred his roan into the scene of action.  Silvermane came out on the one piece of rising ground beyond the level, and stood looking backward toward the brothers.  When the great roan crashed through the thickets into his sight he leaped as if he had been stung, and plunged away.

The Naabs had hemmed him in a triangle, Dave and Billy at the broad end, August at the apex, and now the real race began.  August chased him up and down, along the rim, across to the long line of cedars, always in the end heading him for the open stretch.  Down this he fled with flying mane, only to be checked by the relentless brothers.  To cover this broad end of the open required riding the like of which Hare had never dreamed of.  The brothers, taking advantage of the brief periods when the stallion was going toward August, changed their tired mustangs for fresh ones.

“Ho!  Mescal!” rolled out August’s voice.  That was the call for Mescal to put Black Bolly after Silvermane.  Her fleetness made the other mustangs seem slow.  All in a flash she was round the corral, with Silvermane between her and the long fence of cedars.  Uttering a piercing snort of terror the gray stallion lunged out, for the first time panic-stricken, and lengthened his stride in a wonderful way.  He raced down the stretch with his head over his shoulder watching the little black.  Seeing her gaining, he burst into desperate headlong flight.  He saved nothing; he had found his match; he won that first race down the level but it had cost him his best.  If he had been fresh he might have left Black Bolly far behind, but now he could not elude her.

August Naab let him run this time, and Silvermane, keeping close to the fence, passed the gate, ran down to the rim, and wheeled.  The black mustang was on him again, holding him in close to the fence, driving him back down the stretch.

The brothers remorselessly turned him, and now Mescal, forcing the running, caught him, lashed his haunches with her whip, and drove him into the gate of the corral.

August and his two sons were close behind, and blocked the gate.  Silvermane’s race was nearly run.

“Hold here, boys,” said August.  “I’ll go in and drive him round and round till he’s done, then, when I yell, you stand aside and rope him as he comes out.”

Silvermane ran round the corral, tore at the steep scaly walls, fell back and began his weary round again and yet again.  Then as sense and courage yielded gradually to unreasoning terror, he ran blindly; every time he passed the guarded gateway his eyes were wilder, and his stride more labored.