. And the
rider may be close. If not I'll take the horses home."

She slipped the noose from the stallion's head, leaving the hackamore,
and, coiling the loose lasso, she hung it over the pommel of the
black's saddle. Then she took up his bridle.

"Come on," she called.

The black followed her, and the stallion, still fast to him by the
lasso Lucy had left tied, trooped behind with bowed head. Lucy was
elated. But Sage King did not like the matter at all. Lucy had to drop
the black's bridle and catch the King, and then ride back to lead the
other again.

A broad trail marked the way the two horses had come, and it led off to
the left, toward where the monuments were thickest, and where the great
sections of wall stood, broken and battlemented. Lucy was hard put to
it to hold Sage King, but the horses behind plodded along. The black
horse struck Lucy as being an ugly, but a faithful and wonderful
animal. He understood everything. Presently she tied the bridle she was
leading him by to the end of her own lasso, and thus let him drop back
a few yards, which lessened the King's fretting.

Intent on the trail, Lucy failed to note time or distance till the
looming and frowning monuments stood aloft before her. What weird
effect they had! Each might have been a colossal statue left there to
mark the work of the ages. Lucy realized that the whole vast valley had
once been solid rock, just like the monuments, and through the millions
of years the softer parts had eroded and weathered and blown away--gone
with the great sea that had once been there. But the beauty, the
solemnity, the majesty of these monuments fascinated her most. She
passed the first one, a huge square butte, and then the second, a
ragged, thin, double shaft, and then went between two much alike,
reaching skyward in the shape of monstrous mittens. She watched and
watched them, sparing a moment now and then to attend to the trail. She
noticed that she was coming into a region of grass, and faint signs of
water in the draws. She was getting high again, not many miles now from
the wall of rock.

All at once Sage King shied, and Lucy looked down to see a man lying on
the ground. He lay inert. But his eyes were open--dark, staring eyes.
They moved. And he called. But Lucy could not understand him.

In a flash she leaped off the King. She ran to the prostrate
man--dropped to her knees.

"Oh!" she cried. His face was ghastly. "Oh! are you--you badly hurt?"