st experience that they would in a few hours be
returned to their freedom. Others--the colts and yearlings--bewildered,
curious and fearful, followed their mothers without protest. But those
who in many a friendly race or primitive battle had proved their growing
years seemed to sense a coming crisis in their lives, hitherto peaceful.
And these, as though warned by that strange instinct which guards all
wild things, and realizing that the open ground between the pass and the
gate presented their last opportunity, made final desperate efforts to
escape. With sudden dashes, dodging and doubling, they tried again and
again for freedom. But always between them and the haunts they loved
there was a persistent horseman. Running, leaping, whirling, in their
efforts to be everywhere at once, the riders worked their charges toward
the gate.

The man on the hilltop sprang to his feet. Hobson threw up his head, and
with sharp ears forward eagerly watched the game he knew so well. With a
quickness incredible to the uninitiated, Phil threw blanket and saddle
to place. As he drew the cinch tight, a shrill cowboy yell came up from
the flat below.

One of the band, a powerful bay, had broken past the guarding horsemen,
and was running with every ounce of his strength for the timber on the
western slope of Black Hill. For a hundred yards one of the riders had
tried to overtake and turn the fugitive; but as he saw how the stride of
the free horse was widening the distance between them, the cowboy turned
back lest others follow the successful runaway's example. The yell was
to inform Phil of the situation.

Before the echoes of the signal could die away Phil was in the saddle,
and with an answering shout sent Hobson down the rough mountain side in
a wild, reckless, plunging run to head the, for the moment, victorious
bay. An hour later the foreman rejoined his companions who were holding
the band of horses at the gate. The big bay, reluctant, protesting,
twisting and turning in vain attempts to outmaneuver Hobson, was a
captive in the loop of "Wild Horse Phil's" riata.

In the big corral that afternoon Phil and his helpers with the Dean and
Little Billy looking on, cut out from the herd the horses selected to be
broken. These, one by one, were forced through the gate into the
adjoining corral, from which they watched with uneasy wonder and many
excited and ineffectual attempts to follow, when their more fortunate
companions were drive