by Zane Grey
He carried only his rifle, revolver, and a small quantity of bread and meat, and thus lightly burdened he made swift progress down the slope and out into the valley. Darkness was coming on and he welcomed it. Stars were blinking when he reached his old hiding place in the split of canon walls, and by their aid he slipped through the dense thickets to the grassy enclosure. Wrangle stood in the center of it with his head up, and he appeared black and of gigantic proportions in the dim light. Venters whistled softly, began a slow approach, and then called. The horse snorted, and, plunging away with dull, heavy sound of hoofs, he disappeared in the gloom. "Wilder than ever," muttered Venters. He followed the sorrel into the narrowing split between the walls, and presently had to desist because he could not see a foot in advance. As he went back toward the open, Wrangle jumped out of an ebony shadow of a cliff, and like a thunderbolt shot huge and black past him down into the starlit glade. Deciding that all attempts to catch Wrangle at night would be useless, Venters repaired to the shelving rock where he had hidden saddle and blanket, and there went to sleep.
The first peep of day found him stirring, and, as soon as it was light enough to distinguish objects, he took his lasso off his saddle and went out to rope the sorrel. He espied Wrangle at the lower end of the cove, and approached him in a perfectly natural manner. When he got near enough, Wrangle evidently recognized him, but was too wild to stand. He ran up the glade, and on into the narrow lane between the walls. This favored Venters's speedy capture of the horse, so coiling his noose ready to throw he hurried on. Wrangle let Venters get to within 100 feet, and then he broke. But as he plunged by, rapidly getting into his stride, Venters made a perfect throw with the rope. He had time to brace himself for the shock; nevertheless, Wrangle threw him and dragged him several yards before halting.
"You wild devil," said Venters as he slowly pulled Wrangle in. "Don't you know me? Come now... old fellow... so... so...."
Wrangle yielded to the lasso, and then to Venters's strong hand. He was as shaggy and wild-looking as a horse left to roam free in the sage. He dropped his long ears and stood readily to be saddled and bridled, but he was exceedingly sensitive and quivered at every touch and sound. Venters led him to the thicket and, bending the close saplings to let him squeeze through, at length reached the open. Sharp survey in each direction assured him of the usual, lonely nature of the canon, then he was in the saddle, riding south.
Wrangle's long, swinging canter was a wonderful ground gainer. His stride was almost twice that of an ordinary horse, and his endurance was equally remarkable. Venters pulled him in occasionally, and walked him up the stretches of rising ground, and along the soft washes. Wrangle had never yet shown any indication of distress while Venters rode him. Nevertheless, there was now reason to save the horse; therefore, Venters did not resort to the hurry that had characterized his former trip. He camped at the last water in the pass. What distance that was to Cottonwoods he did not know; he calculated, however, that it was in the neighborhood of fifty miles.
Early in the morning he proceeded on his way and about the middle of the forenoon reached the constricted gap that marked the southerly end of the pass and through which led the trail up to the sage level. He spied out Lassiter's tracks in the dust, but no others, and, dismounting, he straightened out Wrangle's bridle and began to lead him up the trail. The short climb, more severe on beast than on man, necessitated a rest on the level above, and during this he scanned the wide purple reaches of slope.
Wrangle whistled his pleasure at the smell of the sage. Remounting, Venters headed up the white trail with the fragrant wind in his face. He had proceeded for perhaps a couple of miles when Wrangle stopped with a suddeness that threw Venters heavily against the pommel.
"What's wrong, old boy?" called Venters, looking down for a loose shoe, or a snake, or a hoof lamed by a picked-up stone. Unrewarded, he raised himself from his scrutiny. Wrangle stood stiffly, head high, with his long ears erect. Thus guided, Venters swiftly gazed ahead to make out a dust-clouded dark group of horsemen riding down the slope. If they had seen him, it apparently made no difference in their speed or direction.
"Wonder who they are?" exclaimed Venters. He was not disposed to run. His cool mood tightened under grip of excitement, as he reflected that whoever the approaching riders were they could not be friends. He slipped out of the saddle and led through behind the tallest sage bush. It might serve to conceal themselves till the riders were close enough for him to see who they were; after that, he would be indifferent to how soon they discovered him.
After looking to his rifle and ascertaining that it was in working order, he watched, and, as he watched, slowly the force of a bitter fierceness, long dormant, gathered, ready to flame into life. If those riders were not rustlers, he had forgotten how rustlers looked and rode. On they came, a small group, so compact and dark that he could not tell their number. How unusual that their horses did not see Wrangle! But such failure, Venters decided, was owing to the speed with which they were traveling. They moved at a swift canter, more affected by rustlers than by riders. Venters grew concerned over the possibility that these horsemen would actually ride down on him before he had a chance to tell what to expect. When they were within 300 yards, he deliberately led Wrangle out into the trail.
Then he heard shouts, and the hard scrape of sliding hoofs, and saw horses rear and plunge back with upflung heads and flying manes. Several little white puffs of smoke appeared sharply against the black background of riders and horses, and shots rang out. Bullets struck far in front of Venters, whipped up the dust, and then hummed low into the sage. The range was great for revolvers, but whether the shots were meant to kill him or merely to check advance, they were enough to fire that waiting ferocity in Venters. Slipping his arm through the bridle, so that Wrangle could not get away, Venters lifted his rifle and pulled the trigger twice.
He saw the first horseman lean sidewise and fall. He saw another lurch in his saddle and heard a cry of pain. Then Wrangle, plunging in fright, lifted Venters, and nearly threw him. He jerked the horse down with a powerful hand, and leaped into the saddle. Wrangle plunged again, dragging his bridle that Venters had not had time to throw in place. Bending over in rapid motion, he secured it and dropped the loop over the pommel. Then with grinding teeth he looked to see what the issue would be.
The band had scattered so as not to afford such a broad mark for bullets. The riders faced Venters, some with red-belching guns. He heard a sharper report, and, just as Wrangle plunged again, he caught the whiz of a leaden missile that would have hit him but for Wrangle's sudden jump. A swift, hot wave, turning cold, passed over Venters. Deliberately he picked out the one rider with a carbine, and killed him. Wrangle snorted shrilly and bolted into the sage. Venters let him run a few rods, then with iron arm checked him.
Five riders, surely rustlers, were left. One leaped out of the saddle to secure his fallen comrade's carbine. A shot from Venters, which missed the man but sent the dust flying over him, made him run back to his horse. Then they separated. The crippled rider went one way, the one frustrated in his attempt to get the carbine rode another. Venters thought his fleeting glance made out a third rider, carrying a strange-appearing bundle, disappearing in the sage. But in the rapidity of action and vision he could not discern what it was. Two riders with three horses swung out to the right. Afraid of the long rifle-a burdensome weapon seldom carried by rustlers or riders-they had been put to rout.
Suddenly Venters discovered that one of the two men last noted was riding Jane Withersteen's horse, Bellsthe beautiful bay racer she had given to Lassiter. Venters uttered a savage outcry. Then the small, wiry, frog-like shape of the second rider and the ease and grace of his seat in the saddle-things so strikingly incongruous-grew more and more familiar in Venters's sight.
"Jerry Card!" cried Venters.
It was, indeed, Tull's right-hand man. Such a whitehot wrath inflamed Venters that he fought himself to see with clearer gaze.
"By God," he exclaimed instantly. "It's Jerry Card! And he's riding Black Star and leading Night!"
The long-kindling, stormy fire in Venters's heart burst into flame. He spurred Wrangle, and, as the horse got going, Venters slipped cartridges into the magazine of his rifle till it was once again full. Card and his companion were now half a mile or more in advance, riding easily down the slope. Venters marked the smooth gait and understood it when Wrangle galloped out of the sage into the broad cattle trail down which Venters had once tracked Jane Withersteen's red herd. This hardpacked trail, from years of use, was as clean and smooth as a road. Venters saw Jerry Card look back over his shoulder; the other rider did likewise. Then the three racers lengthened their stride to the point where the swinging canter was ready to break into a gallop.
"Wrangle, the race's on," said Venters grimly. "We'll canter with them and gallop with them and run with them. We'll let them set the pace."
Venters knew he bestrode the strongest, swiftest, most tireless horse ever ridden by any rider across the Utah uplands. Recalling Jane Withersteen's devoted assurance that Night could run neck and neck with Wrangle, and Black Star could show his heels to him, Venters wished that Jane were there to see the race to recover her blacks and in the unqualified superiority of the giant sorrel. Then Venters found himself thankful that she was absent, for he meant that race to end in Jerry Card's death. The first flush-the raging of Venters's wrath-passed to leave him in sullen, almost cold possession of his will. It was a deadly mood, utterly foreign to his nature, engendered, fostered, and released by the wild passions of wild men in a wild country. The strength in him then-the thing rife in him that was not hate but something as remorseless-might have been the fiery fruition of a whole lifetime of vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped him.
Venters considered the race with cunning mind. The rider on Bells would probably drop behind and take to the sage. What he did was of little moment to Venters. To stop Jerry Card, his evil, hidden career as well as his present flight, and then to catch the blacks-that was all that concerned Venters. The cattle trail wound for miles and miles down the slope. Venters saw with a rider's keen vision ten, fifteen, twenty miles of clear purple sage. There were no oncoming riders or rustlers to aid Card. His only chance to escape lay in abandoning the stolen horses and creeping away in the sage to hide. In ten miles Wrangle could run Black Star and Night off their feet, and in fifteen he could kill them outright. So Venters held the sorrel in, letting Card make the running. It was a long race that would save the blacks.
In a few miles of that swinging canter Wrangle had crept appreciably closer to the three horses. Jerry Card turned again. When he saw how the sorrel had gained, he put Black Star to a gallop. Night and Bells, on either side of him, swept into his stride.
Venters loosened the rein on Wrangle and let him break into a gallop. The sorrel saw the horses ahead and wanted to run, but Venters restrained him, and in the gallop he gained more than in the canter. Bells was fast in that gait, but Black Star and Night had been trained to run. Slowly Wrangle closed the gap down to a quarter of a mile, and crept closer and closer.
Jerry Card wheeled once more. Venters distinctly saw the flash of his red face in the sun. This time he looked long. Venters laughed. He knew what passed in Card's mind. The rider was trying to make out what horse it happened to be that thus gained on Jane Withersteen's peerless racers. Wrangle had so long been away from the village that not improbably Jerry had forgotten. Besides, whatever Jerry's qualifications for his fame as the greatest rider of the sage, certain it was that his best point was not farsightedness. He had not recognized Wrangle. After what must have been a searching gaze, he got his comrade to face about. This action gave Venters amusement. It spoke so surely of the fact that neither Card nor the rustler actually knew their danger. Yet if they kept to the trail-and the last thing such men would do would be to leave it-they were both doomed.
This comrade of Card's whirled far around in his saddle, and he even shaded his eyes from the sun. He, too, looked long. Then, all at once, he faced ahead again and, bending low in the saddle, began to fling his right arm up and down. That flinging Venters knew to be the lashing of Bells. Jerry also became active. The three racers lengthened out into a run.
"Now, Wrangle!" cried Venters. "Run! You big devil! Run!"
Venters laid the reins on Wrangle's neck and dropped the loop over the pommel. The sorrel needed no guiding on that smooth trail. He was surer-footed in a run than at any other fast gait, and his running gave the impression of something devilish. He might now have been activated by Venters's spirit; undoubtedly his savage running fitted the mood of his rider. Venters bent forward, swinging with the horse, and gripped his rifle. His eye measured the distance between him and Jerry Card.
In less than two miles of running Bells began to drop behind the blacks and Wrangle began to overhaul him.
Venters anticipated that the rustler would soon take to the sage. Yet he did not. Not improbably he reasoned that the powerful sorrel could more easily overtake Bells in the heavier going outside of the trail. Soon only a few hundred yards lay between Bells and Wrangle. Turning in his saddle, the rustler began to shoot, and the bullets beat up little whiffs of dust. Venters raised his rifle, ready to take snap shots, and waited for favorable opportunity when Bells was out of line with the forward horses. Venters had it in him to kill these men as if they were skunk-bitten coyotes, but, also, he had restraint enough to keep from shooting one of Jane's beloved Arabians.
No great distance was covered, however, before Bells swerved to the left, out of line with Black Star and Night. Then Venters, aiming high and waiting for the pause between Wrangle's great strides, began to take snap shots at the rustler. The fleeing rider presented a broad target for a rifle, but he was moving swiftly forward and bobbing up and down. Moreover, shooting from Wrangle's back was shooting from a speeding thunderbolt. Added to that was the danger of a lowplaced bullet taking effect on Bells. Yet, despite these considerations, making the shot exceedingly difficult, Venters's confidence, like his implacability, saw a speedy and fatal termination of that rustler's race. On the sixth shot the rustler threw up his arms and took a flying tumble off his horse. He rolled over and over, hunched himself to a half-erect position, fell, and then dragged himself into the sage. As Venters went thundering by, he peered keenly into the sage, but caught no sign of the man. Bells ran a few hundred yards, slowed up, and had stopped when Wrangle passed him.
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 to resist shooting 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 his 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 sagesweet 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 amazement, Jerry had been mounted on Black Star. Another clearer, keener gaze assured Venters that Black Star was really riderless. Night now carried Jerry Card.
"He's changed from one to the other!" ejaculated Venters, realizing the astounding feat with unstinted admiration. "Changed at full speed! Jerry Card, that's what you've done, unless I'm drunk on the smell of sage. But I've got to see the trick before I believe it."
Thenceforth, while Wrangle sped on, Venters glued his eyes to the little rider. Jerry Card rode as only he could ride. Of all the daring horsemen of the uplands Jerry was the one rider best fitted to bring out the greatness of the blacks in that long race. He had them on a dead run, but not yet at the last strained and killing pace. From time to time he glanced backward, as a wise general in retreat calculating his chances and the power and speed of pursuers, and the moment for the last, desperate burst. No doubt Card, with his life at stake, gloried in that race, perhaps more wildly than Venters. For he had been born to the sage and the saddle and the wild. He was more than half horse. Not until the last call-the sudden, upflashing instinct of selfpreservation-would he lose his skill and judgment and nerve-and the spirit of that race. Venters seemed to read Jerry's mind. That little, crime-stained rider was actually thinking of his horses, husbanding their speed, handling them with knowledge of years, glorying in their beautiful, swift-racing stride, and wanting them to win the race-when his own life hung suspended in quivering balance. Again Jerry whirled in his saddle and the sun flashed redly on his face. Turning, he drew Black Star close and closer toward Night till they ran side-by-side, as one horse. Then Card raised himself in the saddle, slipped out of the stirrups, and, somehow twisting himself, leaped upon Black Star. He did not even lose the swing of the horse. Like a leech he was there on the other saddle, and, as the horses separated, his right foot, that had been apparently doubled under him, shot down to catch the stirrup. The grace and dexterity and daring of that rider's act won something more than admiration from Venters. For the distance of a mile, Jerry rode Black Star, and then changed back to Night. But all Jerry's skill and the running of the blacks could avail little more against the sorrel.
