A touch of the spur made Sol lunge forward to head off the raider.  Diablo was in his stride, but the distance and angle favored Sol.  The raider had no carbine.  He held aloft a gun ready to level it and fire.  He sat the saddle as if it were a stationary seat.  Gale saw Ladd lean down and drop the .405 in the sand.  He would take no chances of wounding Belding’s best-loved horse.

Then Gale sat transfixed with suspended breath watching the horses thundering toward him.  Blanco Diablo was speeding low, fleet as an antelope, fierce and terrible in his devilish action, a horse for war and blood and death.  He seemed unbeatable.  Yet to see the magnificently running Blanco Sol was but to court a doubt.  Gale stood spellbound.  He might have shot the raider; but he never thought of such a thing.  The distance swiftly lessened.  Plain it was the raider could not make the opening ahead of Ladd.  He saw it and swerved to the left, emptying his six-shooter as he turned.  His dark face gleamed as he flashed by Gale.

Blanco Sol thundered across.  Then the race became straight away up the valley.  Diablo was cold and Sol was hot; therein lay the only handicap and vantage.  It was a fleet, beautiful, magnificent race.  Gale thrilled and exulted and yelled as his horse settled into a steadily swifter run and began to gain.  The dust rolled in a funnel-shaped cloud from the flying hoofs.  The raider wheeled with gun puffing white, and Ladd ducked low over the neck of his horse.

The gap between Diablo and Sol narrowed yard by yard.  At first it had been a wide one.  The raider beat his mount and spurred, beat and spurred, wheeled round to shoot, then bent forward again.  In his circle at the upper end of the valley he turned far short of the jumble of rocks.

All the devil that was in Blanco Diablo had its running on the downward stretch.  The strange, cruel urge of bit and spur, the crazed rider who stuck like a burr upon him, the shots and smoke added terror to his natural violent temper.  He ran himself off his feet.  But he could not elude that relentless horse behind him.  The running of Blanco Sol was that of a sure, remorseless driving power—­steadier—­stronger—­swifter with every long and wonderful stride.

The raider tried to sheer Diablo off closer under the wall, to make the slope where his companion had escaped.  But Diablo was uncontrollable.  He was running wild, with breaking gait.  Closer and closer crept that white, smoothly gliding, beautiful machine of speed.

Then, like one white flash following another, the two horses gleamed down the bank of a wash and disappeared in clouds of dust.

Gale watched with strained and smarting eyes.  The thick throb in his ears was pierced by faint sounds of gunshots.  Then he waited in almost unendurable suspense.

Suddenly something whiter than the background of dust appeared above the low roll of valley floor.  Gale leveled his glass.  In the clear circle shone Blanco Sol’s noble head with its long black bar from ears to nose.  Sol’s head was drooping now.  Another second showed Ladd still in the saddle.