's power of movement, and she spurred the black into the open.

He wanted to run and he was swift. Madeline loosened the reins--laid
them loose upon his neck. His action was strange to her. He was hard
to ride. But he was fast, and she cared for nothing else. Madeline knew
horses well enough to realize that the black had found he was free and
carrying a light weight. A few times she took up the bridle and pulled
to right or left, trying to guide him. He kept a straight course,
however, and crashed through small patches of mesquite and jumped the
cracks and washes. Uneven ground offered no perceptible obstacle to his
running. To Madeline there was now a thrilling difference in the lash of
wind and the flash of the gray ground underneath. She was running away
from something; what that was she did not know. But she remembered
Florence, and she wanted to look back, yet hated to do so for fear of
the nameless danger Florence had mentioned.

Madeline listened for the pounding of pursuing hoofs in her rear.
Involuntarily she glanced back. On the mile or more of gray level
between her and the ridge there was not a horse, a man, or anything
living. She wheeled to look back on the other side, down the valley
slope.

The sight of Florence riding Majesty in zigzag flight before a whole
troop of vaqueros blanched Madeline's cheek and made her grip the pommel
of her saddle in terror. That strange gait of her roan was not his
wonderful stride. Could Majesty be running wild? Madeline saw one
vaquero draw closer, whirling his lasso round his head, but he did not
get near enough to throw. So it seemed to Madeline. Another vaquero
swept across in front of the first one. Then, when Madeline gasped in
breathless expectancy, the roan swerved to elude the attack. It flashed
over Madeline that Florence was putting the horse to some such awkward
flight as might have been expected of an Eastern girl frightened out of
her wits. Madeline made sure of this when, after looking again, she saw
that Florence, in spite of the horse's breaking gait and the irregular
course, was drawing slowly and surely down the valley.

Madeline had not lost her head to the extent of forgetting her own mount
and the nature of the ground in front. When, presently, she turned again
to watch Florence, uncertainty ceased in her mind. The strange features
of that race between girl and vaqueros were no longer in evidence.
Majesty was in his beautiful, wonderful stride, low