m back. In crossing from one ridge to another he saw where
the horse had made muddy a pool of water. It occurred to Venters then
that Wrangle had drunk his fill, and did not seem the worse for it, and
might be anything but easy to catch. And, true enough, he could not come
within roping reach of the sorrel. He tried for an hour, and gave up in
disgust. Wrangle did not seem so wild as simply perverse. In a quandary
Venters returned to the other horses, hoping much, yet doubting more,
that when Wrangle had grazed to suit himself he might be caught.

As the afternoon wore away Venters's concern diminished, yet he kept
close watch on the blacks and the trail and the sage. There was no
telling of what Jerry Card might be capable. Venters sullenly acquiesced
to the idea that the rider had been too quick and too shrewd for him.
Strangely and doggedly, however, Venters clung to his foreboding of
Card's downfall.

The wind died away; the red sun topped the far distant western rise of
slope; and the long, creeping purple shadows lengthened. The rims of the
canyons gleamed crimson and the deep clefts appeared to belch forth blue
smoke. Silence enfolded the scene.

It was broken by a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the thudding
of heavy hoofs. Venters sprang erect and wheeled south. Along the canyon
rim, near the edge, came Wrangle, once more in thundering flight.

Venters gasped in amazement. Had the wild sorrel gone mad? His head
was high and twisted, in a most singular position for a running horse.
Suddenly Venters descried a frog-like shape clinging to Wrangle's neck.
Jerry Card! Somehow he had straddled Wrangle and now stuck like a huge
burr. But it was his strange position and the sorrel's wild scream that
shook Venters's nerves. Wrangle was pounding toward the turn where the
trail went down. He plunged onward like a blind horse. More than one of
his leaps took him to the very edge of the precipice.

Jerry Card was bent forward with his teeth fast in the front of
Wrangle's nose! Venters saw it, and there flashed over him a memory of
this trick of a few desperate riders. He even thought of one rider
who had worn off his teeth in this terrible hold to break or control
desperate horses. Wrangle had indeed gone mad. The marvel was what
guided him. Was it the half-brute, the more than half-horse instinct of
Jerry Card? Whatever the mystery, it was true. And in a few more rods
Jerry would have the sorrel turning into t