he slipped a foot or
two, halted, slipped once more, and slowly started again with that low
roar. He did not care whether it slipped or stopped. Like a wolf he
leaped closer, whirling his rope. The loop hissed round his head and
whistled as he flung it. And when fiercely he jerked back on the rope,
the noose closed tight round Wildfire's neck.

"I--got--a rope--on him!" cried Slone, in hoarse pants.

He stared, unbelieving. It was unreal, that sight--unreal like the slow,
grinding movement of the avalanche under him. Wildfire's head seemed a
demon head of hate. It reached out, mouth agape, to bite, to rend. That
horrible scream could not be the scream of a horse.

Slone was a wild-horse hunter, a rider, and when that second of
incredulity flashed by, then came the moment of triumph. No moment could
ever equal that one, when he realized he stood there with a rope around
that grand stallion's neck. All the days and the miles and the toil and
the endurance and the hopelessness and the hunger were paid for in that
moment. His heart seemed too large for his breast.

"I tracked--you!" he cried, savagely. "I stayed--with you! An' I got a
rope--on you! An'--I'll ride you--you red devil!"

The passion of the man was intense. That endless, racking pursuit had
brought out all the hardness the desert had engendered in him. Almost
hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words. He hauled on the lasso,
pulling the stallion's head down and down. The action was the lust of
capture as well as the rider's instinctive motive to make the horse fear
him. Life was unquenchably wild and strong in that stallion; it showed
in the terror which made him hideous. And man and beast somehow
resembled each other in that moment which was inimical to noble life.

The avalanche slipped with little jerks, as if treacherously loosing its
hold for a long plunge. The line of fire below ate at the bleached grass
and the long column of smoke curled away on the wind.

Slone held the taut lasso with his left hand, and with the right he
swung the other rope, catching the noose round Wildfire's nose. Then
letting go of the first rope he hauled on the other, pulling the head of
the stallion far down. Hand over hand Slone closed in on the horse. He
leaped on Wildfire's head, pressed it down, and, holding it down on the
sand with his knees, with swift fingers he tied the nose in a
hackamore--an improvised halter. Then, just as swiftly, he bound his
scarf tight