"Steady!" gasped Red Perris. "They're coming like bullets, Alcatraz, old timer! Steady!"
One hand rested on the withers, the other on the back of the chestnut, and he raised himself gingerly up. Under the weight the stallion shrank catwise, aside and down. But there was no wrench of a curb in his mouth, no biting of the cinches. In the old days of his colthood, a barelegged boy used to come into the pasture and jump on his bare back. His mind flashed back to that--the bare, brown legs. That was before he had learned that men ride with leather and steel. He waited, holding himself strongly on leash, ready to turn loose his whole assortment of tricks--but Perris slipped into place almost as lightly as that dimly remembered boy in the pasture.
To the side, that line of rushing riders was ye
