pped off her lips
as if wiped by an invisible hand.

There, the same distance away as when they started, rode Courtrey!

No farther away!

Bolt, shining in the sun, was keeping pace with El Rey!

Farther back--a little farther back--was Arrow, running magnificently,
too.

A greater distance behind the two came Slingshot.

Tharon was frightened. Not for herself. Not for the intent of the men
who came after her. Not for gun-fire, nor for capture.

She was afraid for the king! Afraid that Bolt could hold that
wonderful pace! Then a surging rage rose and sickened her.

She leaned down again and called once more into the stallion's ear and
once more the note rose a notch. She felt that great pulsing seeming
of reserve. Always when she called there was the answer. The plain
swam beneath her like a blur. The thunder of the king's hoofs was a
single note also.

Then Tharon raised her eyes and saw that she had left the open land
behind. The mountains were rising swiftly before, she was sweeping up
their skirts. Trees flew by. She heard the singing of waters. The
forests seemed to come down out of the skies to meet her, dark,
forbidding.

She felt a sense of disaster, of helplessness. Where was she going,
she and El Rey, with her enemies behind and coming fast? What was to
be the end of the race? And then, all suddenly, the woods seemed to
fall away on either side, a gateway to open up before her. A lovely
open glade spread into the heart of the forest and the great king
thundered in between the guarding pines. Like a silver flame he shot
up the sloping floor, slowed, changed and came to stop before a cabin
that sat securely at the glade's head.

With the crashing pound of El Rey's ploughing hoofs upon the very
stones at the step, a man came quickly from the interior of the cabin
and stepped out, his hand lifted.

Tharon Last, her hair beating on her shoulders, her face pale as
ashes, her breast heaving, looked back toward the opening in the
trees, and saw Courtrey swing in a wide arc and circle past to
disappear toward the north.

After him swept his two lieutenants, to fade swiftly from sight behind
the shielding forest.

A grim expression spread over the face of the man at the step as he,
too, beheld the end of the vital play.

Then he looked up at the girl on the silver stallion and his dark eyes
were alight.

"What's this?" he asked abruptly.

Then Tharon seemed to become conscious of him for the firs