attle, remembered the gun man's heritage
and turned to his business.

The sun was well down over the western Rockface when Tharon and El Rey
came back to Last's Holding. The riders were bringing in the cattle,
dust was rising in clouds above the moving masses. From the ranch
house came the savory smells of cooking.

[Illustration: NEAR THEM SAT A RIDER ON A BUCKSKIN HORSE]

The stallion was limber as a willow. He tossed his handsome head and
his eyes were bright as stars set in his silver face. Life was at high
tide in him, flowing magnificently. Tharon, her cheeks whipped into
pulsing colour by the wind and the bounding speed, her tawny mane
loosed from its bands and flying in a cloud behind her, smoothed back
from her face, looked wild as an Indian. As she drew up and sat
watching the work of the evening, she smiled for the first time in
many days, and Jack Masters, passing, felt his heart leap with
gladness.

When the mistress of Last's was sad, so were her people.

When the last big corral gate had swung to and the boys turned in to
unsaddle, she touched El Rey with a toe and went over among them.

"Line up the horses, boys," she said, "I want to see them all together
once more. Somethin' came back in me today--somethin' I been missing
for a long time. I'll be myself again."

Billy turned Redbuck to face her, dropped his rein. Curly rode up on
Drumfire. These two were red roans, dead matches. Bent brought Golden
and stood him alongside. From far at the back of the corral they
called Conford and Jack, who came wondering, the former on Sweetheart,
true sister of El Rey, almost as big, almost as fast, almost as
beautiful.

Silver-blue roan, silver-pointed, slim, graceful, springy, she had not
a single dark spot on her except the sharp black bars of the finger
marks outside her knees.

"You darlin'!" said Tharon as she wheeled in line.

Then came Jack on Westwind, and he was another buckskin, paler than
Golden, most marvelously pointed in pure chestnut brown. His finger
marks were brown instead of black--the only horse at the Holding so
distinguished, for no matter of what shade or colour, in all the
others these peculiar marks were jet black. Five splendid creatures
they stood and pounded the ringing earth, tossed their heads and
waited, though they had all been far that day and it was feeding
time.

Out in the horse corrals there were many more of their breed, slim,
wiry horses, toughened and hardened b