his emotion prevented him from embracing Slone. The
huge fists unclenched and the big fingers worked.

"You mean to tell me you did fer Cordts an' Hutch what you did fer
Sears?" he boomed out.

"They're dead--gone, Bostil--honest to God!" replied Slone.

Holley thrust a quivering, brown hand into Bostil's face. "What did I
tell you?" he shouted. "Didn't I say wait?"

Bostil threw away all that deep fury of passion, and there seemed only
a resistless and speechless admiration left. Then ensued a moment of
silence. The riders watched Slone's weary face as it drooped, and
Bostil, as he loomed over him.

"Where's the red stallion?" queried Bostil. That was the question hard
to get out.

Slone raised eyes dark with pain, yet they flashed as he looked
straight up into Bostil's face. "Wildfire's dead!"

"DEAD!" ejaculated Bostil.

Another moment of strained exciting suspense.

"Shot?" he went on.

"No."

"What killed him?"

"The King, sir! ... Killed him on his feet!"

Bostil's heavy jaw bulged and quivered. His hand shook as he laid it on
Sage King's mane--the first touch since the return of his favorite.

"Slone--what--is it?" he said, brokenly, with voice strangely softened.
His face became transfigured.

"Sage King killed Wildfire on his feet.... A grand race, Bostil! ...
But Wildfire's dead--an' here's the King! Ask me no more. I want to
forget."

Bostil put his arm around the young man's shoulder. "Slone, if I don't
know what you feel fer the loss of thet grand hoss, no rider on earth
knows! ... Go in the house. Boys, take him in--all of you--an' look
after him."

Bostil wanted to be alone, to welcome the King, to lead him back to the
home corral, perhaps to hide from all eyes the change and the uplift
that would forever keep him from wronging another man.

The late rains came and like magic, in a few days, the sage grew green
and lustrous and fresh, the gray turning to purple.

Every morning the sun rose white and hot in a blue and cloudless sky.
And then soon the horizon line showed creamy clouds that rose and
spread and darkened. Every afternoon storms hung along the ramparts and
rainbows curved down beautiful and ethereal. The dim blackness of the
storm-clouds was split to the blinding zigzag of lightning, and the
thunder rolled and boomed, like the Colorado in flood.

The wind was fragrant, sage-laden, no longer dry and hot, but cool in
the shade.

Slone and Lucy never rode down so far a