wound her fingers in the white cloud
of mane that flailed her face and edged up, inch by inch. When her
knees were well up on the huge shoulders that worked beneath them
powerfully, she gathered the reins, one in each hand, leaned down
along the outstretched neck and let the great king run. The wind sang
by her ears in a rising whine, the green prairie was a flowing sea
beneath her, the thunder of the pounding hoofs was stupendous music.
Tharon shut her eyes and rode, and for the first time since Jim Last's
death a sense of joy rose in her like a tide.

She had ridden El Rey before, many times. She had felt him sail
beneath her down the open prairies and always it was so, as if the
earth slid by, as if the note of the wind lifted minute by minute. She
had wondered often about this--how long it would continue to rise with
El Rey's rising speed, how long before he would reach a maximum above
which he could not go, a place where the singing note would remain
fixed.

She had never known him reach that point. Always he could go faster.
Always he had reserves.

Far out ahead she saw a bunch of cattle feeding. They were lazily
circling in a wide arc, content under the beaming sun. Near them sat a
rider on a buckskin horse, Bent Smith on Golden. This Golden was one
of the prides of Last's Holding. Bigger than Drumfire or Redbuck, he
ranked next to El Rey himself in speed, for his slim legs, slapped
smartly with the distinguishing finger marks on the outside of the
knee, were long and shapely, his back short-coupled and strong, his
withers low, his narrow hips high. Tharon bore hard on El Rey's bit,
leaned her body to the left, and they swung in toward Bent and Golden
in a beautiful sweeping curve that brought the cowboy up in his
stirrups with his hat a-wave above him.

"Good girl!" he yelled with leaping gladness as the superb pair shot
by. "Good girl! Go to it!"

Tharon loosed a hand long enough to wave back and was gone, on down
the sloping land toward the country of the Black Coulee, her dark
skirts fluttering at her knees, the two heavy guns pounding her thighs
at every jump.

It was a long time before El Rey came down from his sweeping flight.

He had been too long holden in cramping bars. The free winds and the
rolling earth filled him with a sort of madness. He ran with joy and
the surety of unbounded power.

The rider, left far behind, watched them anxiously for a time, thought
of following, glanced at his c