den autumn when it was always afternoon and
time stood still! Hers always the rides in the open, with the sun at
her back and the wind in her face! And hers surely, sooner or later,
the nameless adventure which had its inception in the strange yearning
of her heart and presaged its fulfilment somewhere down that trailless
sage-slope she loved so well!

Bostil's house was a crude but picturesque structure of red stone and
white clay and bleached cottonwoods, and it stood at the outskirts of
the cluster of green-inclosed cabins which composed the hamlet. Bostil
was wont to say that in all the world there could hardly be a grander
view than the outlook down that gray sea of rolling sage, down to the
black-fringed plateaus and the wild, blue-rimmed and gold-spired
horizon.

One morning in early spring, as was Bostil's custom, he ordered the
racers to be brought from the corrals and turned loose on the slope. He
loved to sit there and watch his horses graze, but ever he saw that the
riders were close at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the
slope of sage. He sat back and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of
mustangs; near by was a field of them, fine and mettlesome and racy;
yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded favorites. Strange it was that
not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild horse, for many of the
riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the Indians. And it
was Bostil's supreme ambition to own a great wild stallion. There was
Plume, a superb mare that got her name from the way her mane swept in
the wind when she was on the ran; and there was Two Face, like a
coquette, sleek and glossy and running and the huge, rangy bay, Dusty
Ben; and the black stallion Sarchedon; and lastly Sage King, the color
of the upland sage, a racer in build, a horse splendid and proud and
beautiful.

"Where's Lucy?" presently asked Bostil.

As he divided his love, so he divided his anxiety.

Some rider had seen Lucy riding off, with her golden hair flying in the
wind. This was an old story.

"She's up on Buckles?" Bostil queried, turning sharply to the speaker.

"Reckon so," was the calm reply.

Bostil swore. He did not have a rider who could equal him in profanity.

"Farlane, you'd orders. Lucy's not to ride them hosses, least of all
Buckles. He ain't safe even for a man."

"Wal, he's safe fer Lucy."

"But didn't I say no?"

"Boss, it's likely you did, fer you talk a lot," replied Farlane. "Luc