r lifted his head, sniffed the air, and snorted. Slone peered into
the black belt of gloom that lay below him. It would be hard to see a
horse there, unless he got high enough to be silhouetted against that
line of fire now flaring to the sky. But he heard the beat of hoofs,
swift, sharp, louder--louder. The night shadows were deceptive. That
wonderful light confused him, made the place unreal. Was he dreaming? Or
had the long chase and his privations unhinged his mind? He reached for
Nagger. No! The big black was real, alive, quivering, pounding the sand.
He scented an enemy.

Once more Slone peered down into the void or what seemed a void. But it,
too, had changed, lightened. The whole valley was brightening. Great
palls of curling smoke rose white and yellow, to turn back as the
monuments met their crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the
stars. It was such a light as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale
moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and
shadowy under the wild and vivid light of burning grass.

In the pale path before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened
down into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a
fleeing phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes,
deceived by his mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived
in dreams on some far desert. But what was that beating in his
ears--sharp, swift, even, rhythmic? Never had his ears played him false.
Never had he heard things in his dreams. That running object was a horse
and he was coming like the wind. Slone felt something grip his heart.
All the time and endurance and pain and thirst and suspense and longing
and hopelessness--the agony of the whole endless chase--closed tight on
his heart in that instant.

The running horse halted just in the belt of light cast by the burning
grass. There he stood sharply defined, clear as a cameo, not a hundred
paces from Slone. It was Wildfire.

Slone uttered an involuntary cry. Thrill on thrill shot through him.
Delight and hope and fear and despair claimed him in swift, successive
flashes. And then again the ruling passion of a rider held him--the
sheer glory of a grand and unattainable horse. For Slone gave up
Wildfire in that splendid moment. How had he ever dared to believe he
could capture that wild stallion? Slone looked and looked, filling his
mind, regretting nothing, sure that the moment was reward for all he had
e