Page:Son of the wind.djvu/420

RV 402 before seized him now as the white sides of the inclosure rushed near him on this side, on that. The barrier, the work of his hands, which he had thought of as so strong and safe, appeared to him suddenly as terribly penetrable. It was in fact no barrier at all, but only a phantom, an appearance of a barrier between the horse and the forest. If the stallion charged it, wouldn't it break like a cobweb? Was this the end of all the brave adventure, to feel the prize slip from him and be lost in the hopeless, endless wilderness?

A perfect horror seized him. Why hadn't he thought of this before? How had he rushed so headlong into this position? Why hadn't the half-breed spoken of the danger, instead of staring dumb, with the saddle in his hands? Was he going crazy himself? How was there any danger? In five years no horse had ever tested the resistance of the walls. But a reply leaped, prompt and uncomfortable in his mind. Horses had never been broken in the canvas corral. They had been captured and hobbled here, but they had not been saddled here and mounted. They had never been driven here to the third degree of madness when they cease to see, cease to fear, welcome anything—a dead wall or a descending cliff—rather than endure the will which stays persistently above them.