of a horse, standing a hand taller than the tallest
of his companions, with great flowing muscles moving liquidly, with
iron lungs under a vast iron chest, with a neck every fine line of
which revealed the racing thoroughbred, with tireless strength in the
tensing shoulders and hips, with speed in the delicately formed,
slender legs; running easily, every leaping stride hurling his great
body in advance of some one of the other horses, his floating mane and
tail spun silk that flashed in the sun like shimmering gold, his
flashing hoofs like a deer's for dainty grace, his coat a deep, rich,
red bay.

"Watch him run!" shouted Big Bill. "Watch him run!"

Two lengths behind Lady Lightfoot, a length . . . and then Little Saxon
had slipped by, flashed by, passed like a gleam of summer sunlight, and
the mare snapped viciously at the lean, clean body that brushed against
her own, robbing her of her place. Big Bill laughed joyously.

"Jealous as a cat, huh, Red? See that?"

"And no man has ever ridden him," muttered Shandon. "Only one man is
ever going to ride you, Little Saxon."

But that day they did not take Little Saxon with them back to the home
corrals; it would be many a day yet before Little Saxon's training
began, before his proud spirit compromised with steel and leather and a
master's hand.

With half the distance to the far end of the little valley passed,
Little Saxon was a length ahead of Lady Lightfoot, his quivering
nostrils scenting danger behind, free range and freedom ahead. Thus
Little Saxon first, Lady Lightfoot jealously guarding and keeping her
place as second in the headlong flight, a slim barrelled sorrel close
at the Lady's heels, the rest of the horses following in a close packed
body, the fleeing animals came to the natural bulwark which the
mountains lifted before them. Their ropes swinging in ever widening
loops, hissing swifter and swifter until in broadening circles they
sang shrilly, Wayne Shandon and Big Bill swept on after them.

"Lightfoot first!" cried Shandon sharply. "It's too rocky, Bill--"

The ground was too broken to chance putting a rope over the defiant
neck of the three year old who had never known what it was to have hemp
touch his lithe body. With Lady Lightfoot it was different. She would
leap aside, she would throw her head one way or the other as she saw
the lasso leave the hand of her would-be captor; but once it touched
her she would stop stone still, too wis