of leaping flame, a line of sweeping smoke, the grass
on fire ... horses!--a man!

Wildfire whistled his ringing blast of hate and menace, his desert
challenge to another stallion.

The man whirled to look.

Slone saw Joel Creech--and Sage King--and Lucy, half naked, bound on
his back!

Joy, agony, terror in lightning-swift turns, paralyzed Slone. But
Wildfire lunged out on the run.

Sage King reared in fright, came down to plunge away, and with a
magnificent leap cleared the line of fire.

Slone, more from habit than thought, sat close in the saddle. A few of
Wildfire's lengthening strides, quickened Slone's blood. Then Creech
moved, also awaking from a stupefying surprise, and he snatched up a
gun and fired. Slone saw the spurts of red, the puffs of white. But he
heard nothing. The torrent of his changed blood, burning and terrible,
filled his ears with hate and death.

He guided the running stallion. In a few tremendous strides Wildfire
struck Creech, and Slone had one glimpse of an awful face. The impact
was terrific. Creech went hurtling through the air, limp and broken, to
go down upon a rock, his skull cracking like a melon.

The horse leaped over the body and the stone, and beyond he leaped the
line of burning grass.

Slone saw the King running into the forest. He saw poor Lucy's white
body swinging with the horse's motion. One glance showed the great gray
to be running wild. Then the hate and passion cleared away, leaving
suspense and terror.

Wildfire reached the pines. There down the open aisles between the
black trees ran the fleet gray racer. Wildfire saw him and snorted. The
King was a hundred yards to the fore.

"Wildfire--it's come--the race--the race!" called Slone. But he could
not hear his own call. There was a roar overhead, heavy, almost
deafening. The wind! the wind! Yet that roar did not deaden a strange,
shrieking crack somewhere behind. Wildfire leaped in fright. Slone
turned. Fire had run up a pine-tree, which exploded as if the trunk
were powder!

"MY GOD! A RACE WITH FIRE! ... LUCY! LUCY!"

In that poignant cry Slone uttered his realization of the strange fate
that had waited for the inevitable race between Wildfire and the King;
he uttered his despairing love for Lucy, and his acceptance of death
for her and himself. No horse could outrun wind-driven fire in a dry
pine forest. Slone had no hope of that. How perfectly fate and time and
place and horses, himself and his swee