in a rocky pocket and a
little grass for Nagger. The third day's travel consisted of forty
miles or more through level pine forest, dry and odorous, but lacking
the freshness and beauty of the forest on the north side of the canyon.
On this south side a strange feature was that all the water, when there
was any, ran away from the rim. Slone camped this night at a muddy pond
in the woods, where Wildfire's tracks showed plainly.

On the following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of
scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a
plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate
distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland
country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand--a
painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes
and barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the
bare, billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly
moving dot of color which was Wildfire.

On open ground like this, Nagger, carrying two hundred and fifty
pounds, showed his wonderful quality. He did not mind the heat nor the
sand nor the glare nor the distance nor his burden. He did not tire. He
was an engine of tremendous power.

Slone gained upon Wildfire, and toward evening of that day he reached
to within half a mile of the stallion. And he chose to keep that far
behind. That night he camped where there was dry grass, but no water.

Next day he followed Wildfire down and down, over the endless swell of
rolling red ridges, bare of all but bleached white grass and meager
greasewood, always descending in the face of that painted desert of
bold and ragged steps. Slone made fifty miles that day, and gained the
valley bed, where a slender stream ran thin and spread over a wide
sandy bottom. It was salty water, but it was welcome to both man and
beast.

The following day he crossed, and the tracks of Wildfire were still wet
on the sand-bars. The stallion was slowing down. Slone saw him, limping
along, not far in advance. There was a ten-mile stretch of level
ground, blown hard as rock, from which the sustenance had been
bleached, for not a spear of grass grew there. And following that was a
tortuous passage through a weird region of clay dunes, blue and violet
and heliotrope and lavender, all worn smooth by rain and wind. Wildfire
favored the soft ground now. He had deviated from his straight course