tes, the black stallion held his place, as motionless as
the very rocks of the mountain side, gazing straight at the mounted men
as though challenging their right to cross the boundary of his kingdom,
while his retainers stood as still, waiting his leadership. With his
long, black mane and tail rippling and waving in the breeze that swept
down from Blair Pass and across the Basin, with his raven-black coat
glistening in the sunlight with the sheen of richest satin where the
swelling muscles curved and rounded from shadow to high light, and with
his poise of perfect strength and freedom, he looked, as indeed he was,
a prince of his kind--a lord of the untamed life that homes in those
God-cultivated fields.

Patches glanced at his companion, as if to speak, but struck by the
expression on the cowboy's face, remained silent. Phil was leaning a
little forward in his saddle, his body as perfect in its poise of alert
and graceful strength as the body of the wild horse at which he was
gazing with such fixed interest. The clear, deeply tanned skin of his
cheeks glowed warmly with the red of his clean, rich blood, his eyes
shone with suppressed excitement, his lips, slightly parted, curved in a
smile of appreciation, love and reverence for the unspoiled beauty of
the wild creature that he himself, in so many ways, unconsciously
resembled.

And Patches--bred and schooled in a world so far from this world of
primitive things--looking from Phil to the wild horse, and back again
from the stallion to the man, felt the spirit and the power that made
them kin--felt it with a, to him, strange new feeling of reverence, as
though in the perfect, unspoiled life-strength of man and horse he came
in closer touch with the divine than he had ever known before.

Then, without taking his eyes from the object of his almost worship,
Phil said, "Now, watch him, Patches, watch him!"

As he spoke, he moved slowly toward the band, while Patches rode close
by his side.

At their movement, the wild stallion called another warning to his
followers, and went a few graceful paces toward the slowly approaching
men. And then, as they continued their slow advance, he wheeled with the
smooth grace of a swallow, and, with a movement so light and free that
he seemed rather to skim over the surface of the ground than to tread
upon it, circled here and there about his band, assembling them in
closer order, flying, with ears flat and teeth bared and mane and t