ork which was logically
his duty. It was his business to head off and turn back the fugitive,
and, unchecked by his helpless rider, who clung fearfully to her
saddle-horn in her extremity, he ran the race of his life, putting his
whole heart into the work, her light weight hampering him almost
negligibly.

The point of intersection was at least five hundred yards away, the
horses racing along the converging sides of an obtuse angle, the roan
some hundred yards in the lead; the point of convergence was just below
the brow of a little hill, and the roan, running in open ground, had the
advantage of the blue who was impeded by the thick sagebrush; he gained
rapidly, changing the locus of intersection thereby, and finally swung
at right angles across the stallion's course.

Grace had been vaguely conscious of a crackle of pistol shots and a
confused roar of profanely phrased implorations, but all her energies
were concentrated to the end of keeping her seat on that plunging roan
thunderbolt, whose speed was accelerated by the lashing reins which,
dropping from her nerveless hand, were now flapping against his sides.
Swinging in a beautiful arc of exactly the correct radius, the roan
headed the blue in triumph, his legs stiffening as he crossed the
latter's course, his hoofs tearing up the thin turf in a fifty-foot
furrow as he essayed a turn in order to forestall any side divergence of
the stallion. But the blue streak swerved not one iota.

With ears flattened against his head, eyes green with malignity and
pain, lips curled back and teeth bared to the gums, he charged directly
at the unbalanced roan, squealing fiendishly as he came. The gallant
gelding floundered ineffectually for a footing, fell directly in the
path of the infuriated beast, and threw his rider over his head.

Though dazed by her violent contact with the hard ground, Grace
instinctively struggled to her knees, raising one hand as if to ward off
that impending horror; twenty yards away the thudding hoofs beat on her
ear drums like a funeral knell, her lips parted in a soundless gasp,
then faintly as from a far distance she heard a dull concussion, felt a
crashing blow, and lost consciousness.

When her eyes opened again they were in close juxtaposition to a rough
tan-colored shirt whose coarse fiber rasped her cheek; the whole
universe seemed rocking with a gentle up and down motion as soothing as
the swing of her beloved hammock, but there was a curi