er Wildfire.

The horses had worked away from the fire, and Wildfire, free of the
stifling smoke, began to break and lunge and pitch, plunging round
Nagger in a circle, running blindly, but with unerring scent. Slone, by
masterly horsemanship, easily avoided the rushes, and made a pivot of
Nagger, round which the wild horse dashed in his frenzy. It seemed that
he no longer tried to free himself. He lunged to kill.

"Steady, Nagger, old boy!" Slone kept calling. "He'll never get at
you.... If he slips that blinder I'll kill him!"

The stallion was a fiend in his fury, quicker than a panther, wonderful
on his feet, and powerful as an ox. But he was at a disadvantage. He
could not see. And Slone, in his spoken intention to kill Wildfire
should the scarf slip, acknowledged that he never would have a chance
to master the stallion. Wildfire was bigger, faster, stronger than
Slone had believed, and as for spirit, that was a grand and fearful
thing to see.

The soft sand in the pass was plowed deep before Wildfire paused in his
mad plunges. He was wet and heaving. His red coat seemed to blaze. His
mane stood up and his ears lay flat.

Slone uncoiled the lassoes from the pommel and slacked them a little.
Wildfire stood up, striking at the air, snorting fiercely. Slone tried
to wheel Nagger in close behind the stallion. Both horse and man
narrowly escaped the vicious hoofs. But Slone had closed in. He took a
desperate chance and spurred Nagger in a single leap as Wildfire reared
again. The horses collided. Slone hauled the lassoes tight. The impact
threw Wildfire off his balance, just as Slone had calculated, and as
the stallion plunged down on four feet Slone spurred Nagger close
against him. Wildfire was a little in the lead. He could only half rear
now, for the heaving, moving Nagger, always against him, jostled him
down, and Slone's iron arm hauled on the short ropes. When Wildfire
turned to bite, Slone knocked the vicious nose back with a long swing
of his fist.

Up the pass the horses plunged. With a rider's wild joy Slone saw the
long green-and-gray valley, and the isolated monuments in the distance.
There, on that wide stretch, he would break Wildfire. How marvelously
luck had favored him at the last!

"Run, you red devil!" Slone called. "Drag us around now till you're
done!"

They left the pass and swept out upon the waste of sage. Slone
realized, from the stinging of the sweet wind in his face, that Nagger
wa