The running horse halted just in the belt of light cast by the burning grass.  There he stood sharply defined, clear as a cameo, not a hundred paces from Slone.  It was Wildfire.

Slone uttered an involuntary cry.  Thrill on thrill shot through him.  Delight and hope and fear and despair claimed him in swift, successive flashes.  And then again the ruling passion of a rider held him—­the sheer glory of a grand and unattainable horse.  For Slone gave up Wildfire in that splendid moment.  How had he ever dared to believe he could capture that wild stallion?  Slone looked and looked, filling his mind, regretting nothing, sure that the moment was reward for all he had endured.

The weird lights magnified Wildfire and showed him clearly.  He seemed gigantic.  He shone black against the fire.  His head was high, his mane flying.  Behind him the fire flared and the valley-wide column of smoke rolled majestically upward, and the great monuments seemed to retreat darkly and mysteriously as the flames advanced beyond them.  It was a beautiful, unearthly spectacle, with its silence the strangest feature.

But suddenly Wildfire broke that silence with a whistle which to Slone’s overstrained faculties seemed a blast as piercing as the splitting sound of lightning.  And with the whistle Wildfire plunged up toward the pass.  Slone yelled at the top of his lungs and fired his gun before he could terrorize the stallion and drive him back down the slope.  Soon Wildfire became again a running black object, and then he disappeared.

The great line of fire had gotten beyond the monuments and now stretched unbroken across the valley from wall to slope.  Wildfire could never pierce that line of flames.  And now Slone saw, in the paling sky to the east, that dawn was at hand.

CHAPTER VII

Slone looked grimly glad when simultaneously with the first red flash of sunrise a breeze fanned his cheek.  All that was needed now was a west wind.  And here came the assurance of it.

The valley appeared hazy and smoky, with slow, rolling clouds low down where the line of fire moved.  The coming of daylight paled the blaze of the grass, though here and there Slone caught flickering glimpses of dull red flame.  The wild stallion kept to the center of the valley, restlessly facing this way and that, but never toward the smoke.  Slone made sure that Wildfire gradually gave ground as the line of smoke slowly worked toward him.

Every moment the breeze freshened, grew steadier and stronger, until Slone saw that it began to clear the valley of the low-hanging smoke.  There came a time when once more the blazing line extended across from slope to slope.