rd fifty miles--mebbe
more. Honestly, I never seen him tired yet. If only he was fast!"

"Wal, Nagger ain't so slow, come to think of thet," replied Bill, with a
grunt. "He's good enough for you not to want another hoss."

"Lin, you're goin' to wear out Wildfire, an' then trap him somehow--is
thet the plan?" asked the other comrade.

"I haven't any plan. I'll just trail him, like a cougar trails a deer."

"Lin, if Wildfire gives you the slip he'll have to fly. You've got the
best eyes for tracks of any wrangler in Utah."

Slone accepted the compliment with a fleeting, doubtful smile on his
dark face. He did not reply, and no more was said by his comrades. They
rolled with backs to the fire. Slone put on more wood, for the keen wind
was cold and cutting; and then he lay down, his head on his saddle, with
a goatskin under him and a saddle blanket over him.

All three were soon asleep. The wind whipped the sand and ashes and
smoke over the sleepers. Coyotes barked from near in darkness, and from
the valley ridge came the faint mourn of a hunting wolf. The desert
night grew darker and colder.

* * * * *

The Stewart brothers were wild-horse hunters for the sake of trades and
occasional sales. But Lin Slone never traded nor sold a horse he had
captured. The excitement of the game, and the lure of the desert, and
the love of a horse were what kept him at the profitless work. His type
was rare in the uplands.

These were the early days of the settlement of Utah, and only a few of
the hardiest and most adventurous pioneers had penetrated the desert in
the southern part of that vast upland. And with them came some of that
wild breed of riders to which Slone and the Stewarts belonged. Horses
were really more important and necessary than men; and this singular
fact gave these lonely riders a calling.

Before the Spaniards came there were no horses in the West. Those
explorers left or lost horses all over the southwest. Many of them were
Arabian horses of purest blood. American explorers and travelers, at the
outset of the nineteenth century, encountered countless droves of wild
horses all over the plains. Across the Grand canyon, however, wild horses
were comparatively few in number in the early days; and these had
probably come in by way of California.

The Stewarts and Slone had no established mode of catching wild horses.
The game had not developed fast enough for that. Every chase of