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Updated: June 29, 2025
Suddenly Slone's sensitive ear vibrated to a thrilling sound. He leaned down to place his ear to the sand. Rapid, rhythmic beat of hoofs made him leap to his feet, reaching for his lasso with right hand and a gun with his left. Nagger lifted his head, sniffed the air, and snorted. Slone peered into the black belt of gloom that lay below him.
One dream in particular always fascinated him, and it was one in which he saw the girl riding Wildfire, winning a great race for her life. Another, just as fascinating, but so haunting that he always dispelled it, was a dream where Lucy, alone and in peril, fought with Cordts or Joel Creech for more than her life. These vague dreams were Slone's acceptance of the blood and spirit in Lucy.
I did you a a little service. We planned to race Wildfire. And I came out to ride him.... That's all." Slone's dark, steady gaze disconcerted Lucy. "But, no one knows me, and we've been alone in secret." "It's not altogether that. I I told Auntie," faltered Lucy. "Yes, just lately." "Lin Slone, I'll never forgive you if you ask Dad that," declared Lucy, with startling force.
Slone felt reasonably sure his horses would be safe there, but he meant to keep a mighty close watch on them. And old Brackton, as if he read Slone's mind, said this: "Keep your eye on thet daffy boy, Joel Creech. He hangs round my place, sleeps out somewheres, an' he's crazy about hosses." Slone did not need any warning like that, nor any information to make him curious regarding young Creech.
"She scolded me. She said.... But, anyway, I coaxed her not to tell on me." "I want to know what she said," spoke up the rider, deliberately. Lucy blushed, and it was a consciousness of confusion as well as Slone's tone that made her half-angry. "She said when I was found out there'd be a a great fuss at the Ford. There would be talk.
Wildfire was the most cunning of all animals a wild stallion; his speed and endurance were incomparable; his scent as keen as those animals that relied wholly upon scent to warn them of danger, and as for sight, it was Slone's belief that no hoofed creature, except the mountain-sheep used to high altitudes, could see as far as a wild horse.
Like a flash Slone leaped into the saddle. A faint cry, away from the wind, startled Slone. It was like a cry he had heard in dreams. How overstrained his perceptions! He was not really sure of anything, yet on the instant he was tense. Straggling cedars on his left almost wholly obstructed Slone's view. Wildfire's ears and nose were pointed that way.
The deep gulch was a barrier to Slone's further progress, but his rifle dominated the situation. "Hold on!" he called, warningly. "Hold on yerself!" yelled the other, aghast, as he halted his horse. He gazed down and evidently was quick to take in the facts. Slone had meant to kill this man without even a word, yet now when the moment had come a feeling almost of sickness clouded his resolve.
Wide avenues between the walls opened on all points of the compass, and that one to the north appeared to be a gateway down into the valley of monuments. The monuments trooped down into the valley to spread out and grow isolated in the distance. Slone's camp was in a clump of cedars surrounding a spring. There was grass and white sage where rabbits darted in and out.
There was a break in the cliff wall, a bare stone slant where horses had gone down and come up. That was enough for Slone to know. He would have attempted the descent if he were sure no other horse but Wildfire had ever gone down there. But Slone's hair began to rise stiff on his head. A horse like Wildfire, and mountain sheep and Indian ponies, were all very different from Nagger.
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