he strength in
him then--the thing rife in him that was note hate, but something as
remorseless--might have been the fiery fruition of a whole lifetime of
vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped him.

Venters thought out the race shrewdly. The rider on Bells would probably
drop behind and take to the sage. What he did was of little moment
to Venters. To stop Jerry Card, his evil hidden career as well as
his present flight, and then to catch the blacks--that was all that
concerned Venters. The cattle trail wound for miles and miles down the
slope. Venters saw with a rider's keen vision ten, fifteen, twenty miles
of clear purple sage. There were no on-coming riders or rustlers to aid
Card. His only chance to escape lay in abandoning the stolen horses and
creeping away in the sage to hide. In ten miles Wrangle could run
Black Star and Night off their feet, and in fifteen he could kill them
outright. So Venters held the sorrel in, letting Card make the running.
It was a long race that would save the blacks.

In a few miles of that swinging canter Wrangle had crept appreciably
closer to the three horses. Jerry Card turned again, and when he saw how
the sorrel had gained, he put Black Star to a gallop. Night and Bells,
on either side of him, swept into his stride.

Venters loosened the rein on Wrangle and let him break into a gallop.
The sorrel saw the horses ahead and wanted to run. But Venters
restrained him. And in the gallop he gained more than in the canter.
Bells was fast in that gait, but Black Star and Night had been trained
to run. Slowly Wrangle closed the gap down to a quarter of a mile, and
crept closer and closer.

Jerry Card wheeled once more. Venters distinctly saw the red flash of
his red face. This time he looked long. Venters laughed. He knew what
passed in Card's mind. The rider was trying to make out what horse it
happened to be that thus gained on Jane Withersteen's peerless racers.
Wrangle had so long been away from the village that not improbably Jerry
had forgotten. Besides, whatever Jerry's qualifications for his fame as
the greatest rider of the sage, certain it was that his best point was
not far-sightedness. He had not recognized Wrangle. After what must have
been a searching gaze he got his comrade to face about. This action gave
Venters amusement. It spoke so surely of the facts that neither Card
nor the rustler actually knew their danger. Yet if they kept to the
trail--and the last thing