“Nor me. I expect we’re all right, long as we don’t try to get a rope on him. I figure the easiest thing is to just start some of them mares near the gate movin out. Once he sees the mares leaving, he’ll move with them. Beats trying to drive him someplace he don’t want to go. Then me and Ignacio can circle back behind him. All the rest of you got to do is stay here and turn them north as they come out. I expect they’ll run a ways, just feelin their oats, but they’ll ease up as soon as they get a little winded.”

Eli took his post at the gate with the others as Farron and Ignacio circled inside, moving slow and careful, starting the mares up with low whistles to avoid a stampede. They did their work well. The horses inside the corral eased through the open gate and shied away to their left when they spotted the riders. Farron worked his way around the corral until he could get behind the black, keeping his distance and sticking close to the fence. The black had his head up and was already moving after the mares, nostrils flared. When a scrub stallion came too close, the big mustang whirled and screamed a warning and the horse shied away. Once he had driven off the scrub, he moved toward the gate at a trot, his tail up. Farron could see the whites of his eyes in the moonlight and felt his heart beat a little faster. The animal now seemed even bigger and stronger than he had the time Farron got a loop on him. It was reasonably evident that no cowboy with sense enough to come in out of the rain would try to rope a horse like that, but Farron had already failed that test.

Eli saw the black as it trotted past him and wheeled to follow the bunch. By his quick count, there were now more than five hundred horses. The federal wranglers must have brought in more in the two days since he had first looked at the holding corral. There were stallions with other bunches among them, but they all gave the black a wide berth. It was a thrill to see him that close, to hear the deep whinny from his chest and to hear the big hooves strike the earth with a different sound than the others made. It was like the boom of a big bass drum next to the quick rattle of a snare drum.