The chestnut had learned that man was the most ruthless and dangerous of the killers. He walked upright and his eyes were in front of his head, not at the side as in animals who do not kill but are pursued by the killers. The ranchers did not like wild horses because they ate the range grass and often crossed with the ranch mares, who then brought forth scrubby, worthless colts, mean and useless as saddle stock. The chestnut stallion stole mares from the range when he could coax or drive them from their pastures. With savage daring he led his band into the tall-grass range in the summer. If the cowboys with their rifles hunted him too persistently he faded away to a distant range down in the desert. In this he was like the lobo wolf. When poison and traps and guns become too evident an old lobo shifts his range. The chestnut stallion had begun to feel that it was time for him to lead his band out of the Crazy Kill country. He was being steadily hunted. Rifles spat in the misty dawn, riders swooped down on the mares when they came out into the open to feed. Major Howard had given orders to kill or run the wild band off his range. He wanted no crossing of his good stock. At first he had played with the idea of having the chestnut stud brought in alive, but his riders could not trap or outrun the big fellow in the rough, broken country. There were too many avenues of escape, too many canyons and tangled mats of down timber. So the major gave the order to shoot the big stud and to exterminate his band. The steady drives and constant ambushes had thinned the ranks of the band from thirty to twenty mares. The big stallion was ready to leave the tall-grass country. He jerked up his head and snorted shrilly, then he circled the herd at a fast trot. When he had gone once around it he halted and stood listening, rigid, his head up, his mane flowing in the wind. He heard a rock rattle from a trail above; then he saw a man. The man was on foot and he was toiling upward, a pack strapped on his back. He did not seem to be interested in the band of wild horses, but the wind carried a strong man smell to the meadow. The scent was rank with the odor of an old pipe. The chestnut stallion laid back his ears and bared his teeth. With a shrill warning he lunged at the rump of the nearest mare. She whinnied with fright as she galloped away. The stallion drove the other mares into a thundering stampede. They charged across the meadow and into the timber, the colts bounding along at their mothers’ sides.