The sorrel had wandered off down the sage between the trail and the canyon.  Once or twice he disappeared in little swales.  Finally Venters concluded Wrangle had grazed far enough, and, taking his lasso, he went to fetch him back.  In crossing from one ridge to another he saw where the horse had made muddy a pool of water.  It occurred to Venters then that Wrangle had drunk his fill, and did not seem the worse for it, and might be anything but easy to catch.  And, true enough, he could not come within roping reach of the sorrel.  He tried for an hour, and gave up in disgust.  Wrangle did not seem so wild as simply perverse.  In a quandary Venters returned to the other horses, hoping much, yet doubting more, that when Wrangle had grazed to suit himself he might be caught.

As the afternoon wore away Venters’s concern diminished, yet he kept close watch on the blacks and the trail and the sage.  There was no telling of what Jerry Card might be capable.  Venters sullenly acquiesced to the idea that the rider had been too quick and too shrewd for him.  Strangely and doggedly, however, Venters clung to his foreboding of Card’s downfall.

The wind died away; the red sun topped the far distant western rise of slope; and the long, creeping purple shadows lengthened.  The rims of the canyons gleamed crimson and the deep clefts appeared to belch forth blue smoke.  Silence enfolded the scene.

It was broken by a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the thudding of heavy hoofs.  Venters sprang erect and wheeled south.  Along the canyon rim, near the edge, came Wrangle, once more in thundering flight.

Venters gasped in amazement.  Had the wild sorrel gone mad?  His head was high and twisted, in a most singular position for a running horse.  Suddenly Venters descried a frog-like shape clinging to Wrangle’s neck.  Jerry Card!  Somehow he had straddled Wrangle and now stuck like a huge burr.  But it was his strange position and the sorrel’s wild scream that shook Venters’s nerves.  Wrangle was pounding toward the turn where the trail went down.  He plunged onward like a blind horse.  More than one of his leaps took him to the very edge of the precipice.

Jerry Card was bent forward with his teeth fast in the front of Wrangle’s nose!  Venters saw it, and there flashed over him a memory of this trick of a few desperate riders.  He even thought of one rider who had worn off his teeth in this terrible hold to break or control desperate horses.  Wrangle had indeed gone mad.  The marvel was what guided him.  Was it the half-brute, the more than half-horse instinct of Jerry Card?  Whatever the mystery, it was true.  And in a few more rods Jerry would have the sorrel turning into the trail leading down into the canyon.

“No—­Jerry!” whispered Venters, stepping forward and throwing up the rifle.  He tried to catch the little humped, frog-like shape over the sights.  It was moving too fast; it was too small.  Yet Venters shot once ...twice...the third time...four times...five! all wasted shots and precious seconds!