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 down along the ground, stretching, with his nose level and straight for the valley.  Between him and the lean horses in pursuit lay an ever-increasing space.  He was running away from the vaqueros.  Florence was indeed “riding the wind,” as Stewart had aptly expressed his idea of flight upon the fleet roan.

A dimness came over Madeline’s eyes, and it was not all owing to the sting of the wind.  She rubbed it away, seeing Florence as a flying dot in a strange blur.  What a daring, intrepid girl!  This kind of strength—­and aye, splendid thought for a weaker sister—­was what the West inculcated in a woman.

The next time Madeline looked back Florence was far ahead of her pursuers and going out of sight behind a low knoll.  Assured of Florence’s safety, Madeline put her mind to her own ride and the possibilities awaiting at the ranch.  She remembered the failure to get any of her servants or cowboys on the telephone.  To be sure, a wind-storm had once broken the wire.  But she had little real hope of such being the case in this instance.  She rode on, pulling the black as she neared the ranch.  Her approach was from the south and off the usual trail, so that she went up the long slope of the knoll toward the back of the house.  Under these circumstances she could not consider it out of the ordinary that she did not see any one about the grounds.

It was perhaps fortunate for her, she thought, that the climb up the slope cut the black’s speed so she could manage him.  He was not very hard to stop.  The moment she dismounted, however, he jumped and trotted off.  At the edge of the slope, facing the corrals, he halted to lift his head and shoot up his ears.  Then he let out a piercing whistle and dashed down the lane.