Bill had a memory, as so many sons
of the frontier places have, a memory that filed and kept record of
little things as well as of what the world calls big things. He
remembered the day when Wayne Shandon had last ridden here, just the
day before Arthur was killed. Wayne and Arthur had come here together;
Arthur with some business reason, of course; equally of course Wayne in
a mere spirit of idling. The younger brother had ridden along to try
out a new rifle he had bought--

"Come on, Bill. Let's find the horses."

Wayne leaned forward suddenly in the saddle, loosened his reins and
touched his horse's sides with his spurred heels. And so they raced
along the side of the lake as they had raced from the range house, Red
Reckless sitting straight in the saddle, his head lifted, his broad hat
pushed far back, his tall, powerful body swaying gracefully, easily
with his horse's stride.

They found Lady Lightfoot with a herd of half wild animals in a little
hollow beyond the head of the lake. A great snorting and stamping, a
flinging aloft of proud heads upon arching necks, the flurry of manes
and tails, black, red, white, all confused in a rush of colour, the
hammering thud of unshod hoofs on soft grassy soil and the herd had
followed Lady Lightfoot's lead in wild flight toward the far end of the
tiny valley. A wonderful creature was Lady Lightfoot, trim and slender
and graceful as a maiden, her coat a little rough from her year in the
woods, her silken mane snarled, but her spirit showing in the toss of
her head, the cock of her ears, the flare of her nostrils, the fire of
her eyes.

"Watch!" yelled Big Bill as he and Shandon thundered along after them,
their ropes already in their hands, nooses widening. "See who takes
her lead away from her!"

It was half a mile to the far end of the little valley where the almost
sheer pitch of the mountains would bring the fleeing animals to a stop.
And before they had gone a hundred yards Wayne Shandon's eyes had
discovered Little Saxon.

The colt had been almost the last of the two score horses when their
startled flight began; already he was seeking the place that was
rightfully his, already he had passed half of the herd and running like
some great greyhound, was eating up the distance which lay between his
outstretched nose and Lady Lightfoot's flickering hoofs. A horse to be
seen in a flash by a knowing eye even in a herd many times bigger than
this one. A king