I'm not very devout, but I tell you
candidly that I reined up my horse, took off my hat, and sat there
gazing, with the queerest feelings, and saying, like the old
Spaniards, 'Sangre de Cristo! Blood of Christ!'

"Then something queer happened to me. You've seen a flash of sunlight
reflected from a window, far off? Well, it wasn't like that, except in
the sharpness of its effect. And I knew there was no house in all that
waste of sand. It was just a flash, and was gone. I searched the
horizon, and saw nothing but red dunes, and little puffs of sand
kicked up by the rising wind. Must have been some trick of vision, I
thought, and I looked away again toward the blood-red peaks. And there
it was again, in the corner of my eye. But it was gone when I tried to
fix it. I put spurs to my horse, and rode toward the dunes, and caught
the flash again--just a bright yellow speck in the darkening
vermilion. It came and went, and seemed then to have been lost
completely. I was about convinced that the red sunset had gone to my
head--that I was following something that existed only in my brain.

"Then, as I loped up to the top of a dune--there he stood, on another
dune, perhaps two hundred yards away. His golden hide reflected the
red glow like polished metal, his mane flamed in the wind. You cannot
possibly imagine the effect of it, in that unreal light, in that
setting of desolation, with the crimson mountains behind him. He stood
alone on the hill, with his head high, motionless as a statue. For as
long as half a minute he let me look at him. Then he turned, and was
gone like a flash of fire. I had just one more glimpse of him, flying
over the dunes, and followed by a score or more of wild horses of all
colors except his color, and none worth looking at. With him the red
went out of the landscape, the peaks turned white, and I sat alone in
the gray, raw twilight. But right there I made up my mind about one
thing: I must have that horse. You know the rest."

"But what do you mean to do with him?" asked Marion, vaguely
troubled.

"Ride him."

"Don't!" she gasped.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"He'll kill you!"

Haig laughed.

"Oh, I think not!"

"But what is the use?"

"What's the use of anything?"

"But it's--"

"Mere folly, you think?"

"Yes."

"Now you don't mean that at all, Miss Gaylord. You know perfectly well
that if I were doing it to please you--to win your admiration--you
wouldn't call it folly."

"Yo