But Pitch had been listening, for he said, “But all this inbreeding, Steve. I don’t understand how there could have been so much of it during all these years and still leave the horses with what good qualities they had at the beginning. Of course, I’m a greenhorn.”

“I only know what I’ve read, Pitch,” Steve said seriously. “And it’s a cinch no one has ever known of a band of horses left to themselves for centuries, as these have been, so your opinion is as good as anyone else’s. But I’ve read,” he went on, “that inbreeding is perfectly all right if the horses are of the purest blood and don’t have any bad traits or weaknesses; because if they do, the bad traits in both sire and dam show up in the foal worse than ever.” Steve paused. “But that hasn’t happened here—at least, as far as we can tell.”

They watched the horses for a few more minutes before Pitch said, “I was thinking of the Arabian blood in these horses, Steve. You know that seems logical to me too, now, because the Arabs invaded Spain in about 700 A.D. They remained in Spain for five hundred years before they were forced out, and I’m sure that by that time their horses had become native to Spain.” Pleased with his own reasoning, Pitch looked at the horses with renewed interest.

Steve’s eyes were upon the red stallion again. The leader’s head had stopped moving back and forth but it was still raised high. Steve saw the quivering of the stallion’s nostrils as he sniffed the air. He was suspicious of something, yet he remained amazingly cool. He still gave no signal to his complacent followers. Suddenly he turned to the south, up the valley this time, sniffing again.

Steve turned with him, but the rocky slope on which he and Pitch were camped blocked his view of the valley to the right and behind them. When he looked back again at the red stallion, he saw that the leader was moving still farther to the center of the valley. There was a quickness to his gait that hadn’t been there before, yet he did not seem frightened. Finally he came to an abrupt stop, his nostrils blown out. Raising his head still higher, he sniffed suspiciously, then quickly turned his head downwind again.

“Seems he’s expecting something,” Pitch said huskily.

“From both directions,” Steve said. “He’s picked up some scent from upwind, yet I’m sure he’s heard something down the valley, even though he can’t smell anything. Look at those ears, Pitch. He’s turned downwind again.”