e, but he would live to run another
race.

Lucy was kneeling beside Wildfire, sobbing and crying: "Wildfire!
Wildfire!"

All of Wildfire was white except where he was red, and that red was not
now his glossy, flaming skin. A terrible muscular convulsion as of
internal collapse grew slower and slower. Yet choked, blinded, dying,
killed on his feet, Wildfire heard Lucy's voice.

"Oh, Lin! Oh, Lin!" moaned Lucy.

While they knelt there the violent convulsions changed to slow heaves.

"He run the King down--carryin' weight--with a long lead to overcome!"
Slone muttered, and he put a shaking hand on the horse's wet neck.

"Oh, he beat the King!" cried Lucy. "But you mustn't--you CAN'T tell
Dad!"

"What CAN we tell him?"

"Oh, I know. Old Creech told me what to say!"

A change, both of body and spirit, seemed to pass over the great
stallion.

"WILDFIRE! WILDFIRE!"

Again the rider called to his horse, with a low and piercing cry. But
Wildfire did not hear.

The morning sun glanced brightly over the rippling sage which rolled
away from the Ford like a gray sea.

Bostil sat on his porch, a stricken man. He faced the blue haze of the
north, where days before all that he had loved had vanished. Every day,
from sunrise till sunset, he had been there, waiting and watching. His
riders were grouped near him, silent, awed by his agony, awaiting
orders that never came.

From behind a ridge puffed up a thin cloud of dust. Bostil saw it and
gave a start. Above the sage appeared a bobbing, black object--the head
of a horse. Then the big black body followed.

"Sarch!" exclaimed Bostil.

With spurs clinking the riders ran and trooped behind him.

"More hosses back," said Holley, quietly.

"Thar's Plume!" exclaimed Farlane.

"An' Two Face!" added Van.

"Dusty Ben!" said another.

"RIDERLESS!" finished Bostil.

Then all were intensely quiet, watching the racers come trotting in
single file down the ridge. Sarchedon's shrill neigh, like a
whistle-blast, pealed in from the sage. From, fields and corrals
clamored the answer attended by the clattering of hundreds of hoofs.

Sarchedon and his followers broke from trot to canter--canter to
gallop--and soon were cracking their hard hoofs on the stony court.
Like a swarm of bees the riders swooped down upon the racers, caught
them, and led them up to Bostil.

On Sarchedon's neck showed a dry, dust-caked stain of reddish tinge.
Holley, the old hawk-eyed rider, had p