Pale
moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and
shadowy under the wild and vivid light of burning grass.

In the pale path before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened
down into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a
fleeting phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes,
deceived by his mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived
in dreams on some far desert. But what was that beating in his
ears--sharp, swift, even, rhythmic? Never had his ears played him
false. Never had he heard things in his dreams. That running object was
a horse and he was coming like the wind. Slone felt something grip his
heart. All the time and endurance and pain and thirst and suspense and
longing and hopelessness--the agony of the whole endless chase--closed
tight on his heart in that instant.

The running horse halted just in the belt of light cast by the burning
grass. There he stood sharply defined, clear as a cameo, not a hundred
paces from Slone. It was Wildfire.

Slone uttered an involuntary cry. Thrill on thrill shot through him.
Delight and hope and fear and despair claimed him in swift, successive
flashes. And then again the ruling passion of a rider held him--the
sheer glory of a grand and unattainable horse. For Slone gave up
Wildfire in that splendid moment. How had he ever dared to believe he
could capture that wild stallion? Slone looked and looked, filling his
mind, regretting nothing, sure that the moment was reward for all he
had endured.

The weird lights magnified Wildfire and showed him clearly. He seemed
gigantic. He shone black against the fire. His head was high, his mane
flying. Behind him the fire flared and the valley-wide column of smoke
rolled majestically upward, and the great monuments seemed to retreat
darkly and mysteriously as the flames advanced beyond them. It was a
beautiful, unearthly spectacle, with its silence the strangest feature.

But suddenly Wildfire broke that silence with a whistle which to
Slone's overstrained faculties seemed a blast as piercing as the
splitting sound of lightning. And with the whistle Wildfire plunged up
toward the pass. Slone yelled at the top of his lungs and fired his gun
before he could terrorize the stallion and drive him back down the
slope. Soon Wildfire became again a running black object, and then he
disappeared.

The great line of fire had gotten beyond the monuments and now
stre