olden glare the sun rose
glorious. And Slone, facing the league-long shadows of the monuments,
rode out again into the silent, solemn day, on his hopeless quest.

For a change Wildfire had climbed high up a slope of talus, through a
narrow pass, rounded over with drifting sand. And Slone gazed down into
a huge amphitheater full of monuments, like all that strange country. A
basin three miles across lay beneath him. Walls and weathered slants of
rock and steep slopes of reddish-yellow sand inclosed this oval
depression. The floor was white, and it seemed to move gently or
radiate with heat-waves. Studying it, Slone made out that the motion
was caused by wind in long bleached grass. He had crossed small areas
of this grass in different parts of the region.

Wildfire's tracks led down into this basin, and presently Slone, by
straining his eyes, made out the red spot that was the stallion.

"He's lookin' to quit the country," soliloquized Slone, as he surveyed
the scene.

With keen, slow gaze Slone studied the lay of wall and slope, and when
he had circled the huge depression he made sure that Wildfire could not
get out except by the narrow pass through which he had gone in. Slone
sat astride Nagger in the mouth of this pass--a wash a few yards wide,
walled by broken, rough rock on one side and an insurmountable slope on
the other.

"If this hole was only little, now," sighed Slone, as he gazed at the
sweeping, shimmering oval floor, "I might have a chance. But down
there--we couldn't get near him."

There was no water in that dry bowl. Slone reflected on the uselessness
of keeping Wildfire down there, because Nagger could not go without
water as long as Wildfire. For the first time Slone hesitated. It
seemed merciless to Nagger to drive him down into this hot, windy hole.
The wind blew from the west, and it swooped up the slope, hot, with the
odor of dry, dead grass.

But that hot wind stirred Slone with an idea, and suddenly he was
tense, excited, glowing, yet grim and hard.

"Wildfire, I'll make you run with your namesake in that high grass,"
called Slone. The speech was full of bitter failure, of regret, of the
hardness of a rider who could not give up the horse to freedom.

Slone meant to ride down there and fire the long grass. In that wind
there would indeed be wildfire to race with the red stallion. It would
perhaps mean his death; at least it would chase him out of that hole,
where to follow him would be