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.