Again Venters began slipping fresh cartridges into the magazine of his rifle, and his hand was so sure and steady that he did not drop a single cartridge.  With the eye of a rider and the judgment of a marksman he once more measured the distance between him and Jerry Card.  Wrangle had gained, bringing him into rifle range.  Venters was hard put to it now not to shoot, but thought it better to withhold his fire.  Jerry, who, in anticipation of a running fusillade, had huddled himself into a little twisted ball on Black Star’s neck, now surmising that this pursuer would make sure of not wounding one of the blacks, rose to his natural seat in the saddle.

In his mind perhaps, as certainly as in Venters’s, this moment was the beginning of the real race.

Venters leaned forward to put his hand on Wrangle’s neck, then backward to put it on his flank.  Under the shaggy, dusty hair trembled and vibrated and rippled a wonderful muscular activity.  But Wrangle’s flesh was still cold.  What a cold-blooded brute thought Venters, and felt in him a love for the horse he had never given to any other.  It would not have been humanly possible for any rider, even though clutched by hate or revenge or a passion to save a loved one or fear of his own life, to be astride the sorrel to swing with his swing, to see his magnificent stride and hear the rapid thunder of his hoofs, to ride him in that race and not glory in the ride.

So, with his passion to kill still keen and unabated, Venters lived out that ride, and drank a rider’s sage-sweet cup of wildness to the dregs.

When Wrangle’s long mane, lashing in the wind, stung Venters in the cheek, the sting added a beat to his flying pulse.  He bent a downward glance to try to see Wrangle’s actual stride, and saw only twinkling, darting streaks and the white rush of the trail.  He watched the sorrel’s savage head, pointed level, his mouth still closed and dry, but his nostrils distended as if he were snorting unseen fire.  Wrangle was the horse for a race with death.  Upon each side Venters saw the sage merged into a sailing, colorless wall.  In front sloped the lay of ground with its purple breadth split by the white trail.  The wind, blowing with heavy, steady blast into his face, sickened him with enduring, sweet odor, and filled his ears with a hollow, rushing roar.

Then for the hundredth time he measured the width of space separating him from Jerry Card.  Wrangle had ceased to gain.  The blacks were proving their fleetness.  Venters watched Jerry Card, admiring the little rider’s horsemanship.  He had the incomparable seat of the upland rider, born in the saddle.  It struck Venters that Card had changed his position, or the position of the horses.  Presently Venters remembered positively that Jerry had been leading Night on the right-hand side of the trail.  The racer was now on the side to the left.  No—­it was Black Star.  But, Venters argued in amaze, Jerry had been mounted on Black Star.  Another clearer, keener gaze assured Venters that Black Star was really riderless.  Night now carried Jerry Card.