第99章

That track led up the narrowing canyon to its head at the base of the plateau.

Slone, mindful of his horse, climbed on foot, halting at the zigzag turns to rest.A long, gradually ascending trail mounted the last slope, which when close at hand was not so precipitous as it appeared from below.Up there the wind, sucked out of the canyons, swooped and twisted hard.

At last Slone led Wildfire over the rim and halted for another breathing-spell.Before him was a beautiful, gently sloping stretch of waving grass leading up to the dark pine forest from which came a roar of wind.

Beneath Slone the wild and whorled canyon breaks extended, wonderful in thousands of denuded surfaces, gold and red and yellow, with the smoky depths between.

Wildfire sniffed the wind and snorted.Slone turned, instantly alert.The wild horse had given an alarm.Like a flash Slone leaped into the saddle.A faint cry, away from the wind, startled Slone.It was like a cry he had heard in dreams.How overstrained his perceptions! He was not really sure of anything, yet on the instant he was tense.

Straggling cedars on his left almost wholly obstructed Slone's view.

Wildfire's ears and nose were pointed that way.Slone trotted him down toward the edge of this cedar clump so that he could see beyond.Before he reached it, however, he saw something blue, moving, waving, lifting.

"Smoke!" muttered Slone.And he thought more of the danger of fire on that windy height than he did of another peril to himself.

Wildfire was hard to hold as he rounded the edge of the cedars.

Slone saw a line of leaping flame, a line of sweeping smoke, the grass on fire...horses!--a man!

Wildfire whistled his ringing blast of hate and menace, his desert challenge to another stallion.

The man whirled to look.

Slone saw Joel Creech--and Sage King--and Lucy, half naked, bound on his back!

Joy, agony, terror in lightning-swift turns, paralyzed Slone.But Wildfire lunged out on the run.

Sage King reared in fright, came clown to plunge away.and with a magnificent leap cleared the line of fire.

Slone, more from habit than thought, sat close in the saddle.A few of Wildfire's lengthening strides, quickened Slone's blood.Then Creech moved, also awaking from a stupefying surprise, and he snatched up a gun and fired.

Slone saw the spurts of red, the puffs of white.But he heard nothing.The torrent of his changed blood, burning and terrible, filled his ears with hate and death.

He guided the running stallion.In a few tremendous strides Wildfire struck Creech, and Slone had one glimpse of all awful face.The impact was terrific.

Creech went hurtling through the air, limp and broken, to go down upon a rock, his skull cracking like a melon.

The horse leaped over the body and the stone, and beyond he leaped the line of burning grass.

Slone saw the King running into the forest.He saw poor Lucy's white body swinging with the horse's motion.One glance showed the great gray to be running wild.Then the hate and passion cleared away, leaving suspense and terror.

Wildfire reached the pines.There down the open aisles between the black trees ran the fleet gray racer.Wildfire saw him and snorted.The King was a hundred yards to the fore.

"Wildfire--it's come--the race--the race!" called Slone.But he could not hear his own call.There was a roar overhead, heavy, almost deafening.The wind!

the wind! Yet that roar did not deaden a strange, shrieking crack somewhere behind.Wildfire leaped in fright.Slone turned.Fire had run up a pine-tree, which exploded as if the trunk were powder!

"MY GOD! A RACE WITH FIRE!...LUCY! LUCY!"In that poignant cry Slone uttered his realization of the strange fate that had waited for the inevitable race between Wildfire and the King; he uttered his despairing love for Lucy, and his acceptance of death for her and himself.

No horse could outrun wind-driven fire in a dry pine forest.Slone had no hope of that.How perfectly fate and time and place and horses, himself and his sweetheart, had met! Slone damned Joel Creech's insane soul to everlasting torment.To think-- to think his idiotic and wild threat had come true--and come true with a gale in the pine-tops! Slone grew old at the thought, and the fact seemed to be a dream.But the dry, pine-scented air made breathing hard;the gray racer, carrying that slender, half-naked form, white in the forest shade, lengthened into his fleet and beautiful stride; the motion of Wildfire, so easy, so smooth, so swift, and the fierce reach of his head shooting forward--all these proved that it was no dream.

Tense questions pierced the dark chaos of Slone's mind--what could he do? Run the King down! Make 'him kill Lucy! Save her from horrible death by fire!

The red horse had not gained a yard on the gray.Slone, keen to judge distance, saw this, and for the first time he doubted Wildfire's power to ran down the King.Not with such a lead! It was hopeless-- so hopeless--He turned to look back.He saw no fire, no smoke--only the dark trunks, and the massed green foliage in violent agitation against the blue sky.That revived a faint hope.If he could get a few miles ahead, before the fire began to leap across the pine-crests, then it might be possible to run out of the forest if it were not wide.

Then a stronger hope grew.It seemed that foot by foot Wildfire was gaining on the King.Slone studied the level forest floor sliding toward him.He lost his hope--then regained it again, and then he spurred the horse.Wildfire hated that as he hated Slone.But apparently he did not quicken his strides.And Slone could not tell if he lengthened them.He was not running near his limit but, after the nature of such a horse, left to choose his gait, running slowly, but rising toward his swiftest and fiercest.

Slone's rider's blood never thrilled to that race, for his blood had curdled.