SON OF THE WIND
them and flung them down inside the inclosure, at the edge of the trees. There was the half-breed coming back again, still with that expression on his face, a lurking question, a doubt. The second vaquero followed. The ropes and lassos were over his arms, across his shoulders, around his neck, more than enough for a hangman. Last into the inclosure, he slid the gates shut.
"Be ready with that stuff, to begin putting it up as soon as I get him out into the open," the horsebreaker said. He took the blanket from Esmeralda. Charley, and keeping close to the canvas wall, made a little circuit to the upper side of the inclosure. Here, with his back to the gate, he had the length of the corral before him, sloping a little to the water. It would have been an easy place down which to stampede an army, were it not for the trees directly in front. He dodged here and there, peering for an opening. The mares at the lower end of the corral moved nervously while he moved, but the stallion did not stir. That was strange. The slightest movement in the stockade was usually enough to set all the wild ones in a flicker of apprehension. Ah, at last he had what he had been looking for. From a certain angle the obscuring glimmer of trunks and branches fell away into a narrow open prospect, a sort of aisle through the trees. At the end of it he
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