e. Yet his
outline was graceful, beautiful. The head was indeed that of the wildest
of all wild creatures--a stallion born wild--and it was beautiful,
savage, splendid, everything but noble. Slone thought that if a horse
could express hate, surely Wildfire did then. It was certain that he did
express curiosity and fury.

Slone shook a gantleted fist at the stallion, as if the horse were
human. That was a natural action for a rider of his kind. Wildfire
turned away, showed bright against the dark background, and then
disappeared.

III

That was the last Slone saw of Wildfire for three days.

It took all of this day to climb out of the canyon. The second was a slow
march of thirty miles into a scrub cedar and pinyon forest, through which
the great red and yellow walls of the canyon could be seen. That night
Slone found a water hole in a rocky pocket and a little grass for
Nagger. The third day's travel consisted of forty miles or more through
level pine forest, dry and odorous, but lacking the freshness and beauty
of the forest on the north side of the canyon. On this south side a
strange feature was that all the water, when there was any, ran away
from the rim. Slone camped this night at a muddy pond in the woods,
where Wildfire's tracks showed plainly.

On the following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of
scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a
plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate
distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland
country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand--a
painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes and
barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the bare,
billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly moving
dot of color which was Wildfire.

* * * * *

On open ground like this, Nagger, carrying two hundred and fifty pounds,
showed his wonderful quality. He did not mind the heat nor the sand nor
the glare nor the distance nor his burden. He did not tire. He was an
engine of tremendous power.

Slone gained upon Wildfire, and toward evening of that day he reached to
within half a mile of the stallion. And he chose to keep that far
behind. That night he camped where there was dry grass, but no water.

Next day he followed Wildfire down and down, over the endless swell of
rolling red ri