“Now!” yelled August Naab.

Mescal drew out of the opening, and Dave and Billy pulled away, one on each side, their lassoes swinging loosely.

Silvermane sprang for the opening with something of his old speed.  As he went through, yellow loops flashed in the sun, circling, narrowing, and he seemed to run straight into them.  One loop whipped close round his glossy neck; the other caught his head.  Dave’s mustang staggered under the violent shock, went to his knees, struggled up and held firmly.  Bill’s mount slid on his haunches and spilled his rider from the saddle.  Silvermane seemed to be climbing into the air.  Then August Naab, darting through the gate in a cloud of dust, shot his lasso, catching the right foreleg.  Silvermane landed hard, his hoofs striking fire from the stones; and for an instant strained in convulsive struggle; then fell heaving and groaning.  In a twinkling Billy loosened his lasso over a knot, making of it a halter, and tied the end to a cedar stump.

The Naabs stood back and gazed at their prize.

Silvermane was badly spent; he was wet with foam, but no fleck of blood marred his mane; his superb coat showed scratches, but none cut into the flesh.  After a while he rose, panting heavily, and trembling in every muscle.  He was a beaten horse; the noble head was bowed; yet he showed no viciousness, only the fear of a trapped animal.  He eyed Black Bolly and then the halter, as though he had divined the fatal connection between them.

VIII THE BREAKER OF WILD MUSTANGS

For a few days after the capture of Silvermane, a time full to the brim of excitement for Hare, he had no word with Mescal, save for morning and evening greetings.  When he did come to seek her, with a purpose which had grown more impelling since August Naab’s arrival, he learned to his bewilderment that she avoided him.  She gave him no chance to speak with her alone; her accustomed resting-place on the rim at sunset knew her no more; early after supper she retired to her tent.

Hare nursed a grievance for forty-eight hours, and then, taking advantage of Piute’s absence on an errand down to the farm, and of the Naabs’ strenuous day with four vicious wild horses in the corral at one time, he walked out to the pasture where Mescal shepherded the flock.

“Mescal, why are you avoiding me?” he asked.  “What has happened?”

She looked tired and unhappy, and her gaze, instead of meeting his, wandered to the crags.

“Nothing,” she replied.

“But there must be something.  You have given me no chance to talk to you, and I wanted to know if you’d let me speak to Father Naab.”

“To Father Naab?  Why—­what about?”

“About you, of course—­and me—­that I love you and want to marry you.”

She turned white.  “No—­no!”

Hare paused blankly, not so much at her refusal as at the unmistakable fear in her face.