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Updated: May 6, 2025
When the dust cleared away Slone saw the stallion, sunk to his flanks in the sand, utterly helpless. With a wild whoop Slone leaped off Nagger, and, a lasso in each hand, he ran down the long bank. The fire was perhaps a quarter of a mile distant, and, since the grass was thinning out, it was not coming so fast as it had been.
The slope was gradual up to this pass to the saddle, and upon coming to a spring and the first pine trees, he decided to halt for camp. The mustang was almost exhausted. Thereupon he hobbled the horses in the luxuriant grass round the spring, and then unrolled his pack. Once as dusk came stealing down, while he was eating his meal, Nagger whistled in fright.
Then sleep came to him and the night seemed short. In the gray dawn he arose refreshed. The horses were restive. Nagger snorted a welcome. Evidently they had passed an uneasy night. Slone found lion tracks at the spring and in sandy places. Presently he was on his way up to the notch between the great wall and the plateau. A growth of thick scrub oak made travel difficult.
And the dampness of it gave him an idea there were snow-banks somewhere not far distant. The dew was already heavy on the grass. He hobbled the horses and put a bell on Nagger. A bell might frighten lions that had never heard one. Then he built a fire and cooked his meal. It had been long since he had camped high up among the pines. The sough of the wind pleased him, like music.
With keen, slow gaze Slone studied the lay of wall and slope, and when he had circled the huge depression he made sure that Wildfire could not get out except by the narrow pass through which he had gone in. Slone sat astride Nagger in the mouth of this pass a wash a few yards wide, walled by broken, rough rock on one side and an insurmountable slope on the other.
Slone realized that in one way or another the pursuit was narrowing down to the end. He found a water hole at the head of a wash in a split in the walls, and here he let Nagger rest and graze one whole day the first day for a long time that he had not kept the red stallion in sight.
It bothered Slone a little that he was getting into a lion country. Nagger showed nervousness, something unusual for him. Slone tied both horses with long halters and stationed them on patches of thick grass. Then he put a cedar stump on the fire and went to sleep. Upon awakening and going to the spring he was somewhat chagrined to see that deer had come down to drink early.
The trail was like a twisted mile of thread between two bulging mountain walls leaning their ledges and fronts over this tilted pass. Slone rested often. Nagger appreciated this and heaved gratefully at every halt. In this monotonous toil Slone forgot the zest of his pursuit. And when Nagger suddenly snorted in fright Slone was not prepared for what he saw.
But Slone kept on. He was hot and Nagger was hot, and that made hard work easier. Sometimes on the wind came a low thunder. Was it a storm or an avalanche slipping or falling water? He could not tell. The sound was significant and haunting. Of one thing he was sure that he could not have found his back trail. But he divined he was never to retrace his steps on this journey.
Nagger braced his huge frame and held the plunging stallion. But the saddle slipped a little, the cinches cracked. Slone eased the strain by wheeling after Wildfire. The horses had worked away from the fire, and Wildfire, free of the stifling smoke, began to break and lunge and pitch, plunging round Nagger in a circle, running blindly, but with unerring scent.
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