That was the last Slone saw of Wildfire for three days.
It took all of this day to climb out of the canyon. The second was a
slow march of thirty miles into a scrub cedar and pinyon forest,
through which the great red and yellow walls of the canyon could be
seen. That night Slone found a water-hole in a rocky pocket and a
little grass for Nagger. The third day's travel consisted of forty
miles or more through level pine forest, dry and odorous, but lacking
the freshness and beauty of the forest on the north side of the canyon.
On this south side a strange feature was that all the water, when there
was any, ran away from the rim. Slone camped this night at a muddy pond
in the woods, where Wildfire's tracks showed plainly.
On the following day Slone rode out of the forest into a country of
scanty cedars, bleached and stunted, and out of this to the edge of a
plateau, from which the shimmering desert flung its vast and desolate
distances, forbidding and menacing. This was not the desert upland
country of Utah, but a naked and bony world of colored rock and sand--a
painted desert of heat and wind and flying sand and waterless wastes
and barren ranges. But it did not daunt Slone. For far down on the
bare, billowing ridges moved a red speck, at a snail's pace, a slowly
moving dot of color which was Wildfire.
On open ground like this, Nagger, carrying two hundred and fifty
pounds, showed his wonderful quality. He did not mind the heat nor the
sand nor the glare nor the distance nor his burden. He did not tire. He
was an engine of tremendous power.
Slone gained upon Wildfire, and toward evening of that day he reached
to within half a mile of the stallion. And he chose to keep that far
behind. That night he camped where there was dry grass, but no water.
Next day he followed Wildfire down and down, over the endless swell of
rolling red ridges, bare of all but bleached white grass and meager
greasewood, always descending in the face of that painted desert of
bold and ragged steps. Slone made fifty miles that day, and gained the
valley bed, where a slender stream ran thin and spread over a wide
sandy bottom. It was salty water, but it was welcome to both man and
beast.
The following day he crossed, and the tracks of Wildfire were still wet
on the sand-bars. The stallion was slowing down. Slone saw him, limping
along, not far in advance. There was a ten-mile stretch of level
ground, blown hard as rock, from which the sustenance had been
bleached, for not a spear of grass grew there. And following that was a
tortuous passage through a weird region of clay dunes, blue and violet
and heliotrope and lavender, all worn smooth by rain and wind. Wildfire
favored the soft ground now. He had deviated from his straight course.
And he was partial to washes and dips in the earth where water might
have lodged. And he was not now scornful of a green-scummed water-hole
with its white margin of alkali. That night Slone made camp with
Wildfire in plain sight. The stallion stopped when his pursuers
stopped. And he began to graze on the same stretch with Nagger. How
strange this seemed to Slone!
Here at this camp was evidence of Indians. Wildfire had swung round to
the north in his course. Like any pursued wild animal, he had began to
circle. And he had pointed his nose toward the Utah he had left.
Next morning Wildfire was not in sight, but he had left his tracks in
the sand. Slone trailed him with Nagger at a trot. Toward the head of
this sandy flat Slone came upon old corn-fields, and a broken dam where
the water had been stored, and well-defined trails leading away to the
right. Somewhere over there in the desert lived Indians. At this point
Wildfire abandoned the trail he had followed for many days and cut out
more to the north. It took all the morning hours to climb three great
steps and benches that led up to the summit of a mesa, vast in extent.
It turned out to be a sandy waste. The wind rose and everywhere were
moving sheets of sand, and in the distance circular yellow dust-devils,
rising high like waterspouts, and back down in the sun-scorched valley
a sandstorm moved along majestically, burying the desert in its yellow
pall.
Then two more days of sand and another day of a slowly rising ground
growing from bare to gray and gray to green, and then to the purple of
sage and cedar--these three grinding days were toiled out with only one
water-hole.
And Wildfire was lame and in distress and Nagger was growing gaunt and
showing strain; and Slone, haggard and black and worn, plodded miles
and miles on foot to save his horse.
Slone felt that it would be futile to put the chase to a test of speed.
Nagger could never head that stallion. Slone meant to go on and on,
always pushing Wildfire, keeping him tired, wearied, and worrying him,
till a section of the country was reached where he could drive Wildfire
into some kind of a natural trap. The pursuit seemed endless. Wildfire
kept to open country where he could not be surprised.
There came a morning when Slone climbed to a cedared plateau that rose
for a whole day's travel, and then split into a labyrinthine maze of
canyons. There were trees, grass, water. It was a high country, cool
and wild, like the uplands he had left. For days he camped on
Wildfire's trail, always relentlessly driving him, always watching for
the trap he hoped to find. And the red stallion spent much of this time
of flight in looking backward. Whenever Slone came in sight of him he
had his head over his shoulder, watching. And on the soft ground of
these canyons he had begun to recover from his lameness. But this did
not worry Slone. Sooner or later Wildfire would go down into a
high-walled wash, from which there would be no outlet; or he would
wander into a box-canyon; or he would climb out on a mesa with no place
to descend, unless he passed Slone; or he would get cornered on a soft,
steep slope where his hoofs would sink deep and make him slow. The
nature of the desert had changed. Slone had entered a wonderful region,
the like of which he had not seen--a high plateau crisscrossed in every
direction by narrow canyons with red walls a thousand feet high.
And one of the strange turning canyons opened into a vast valley of
monuments.
The plateau had weathered and washed away, leaving huge sections of
stone walls, all standing isolated, different in size and shape, but
all clean-cut, bold, with straight lines. They stood up everywhere,
monumental, towering, many-colored, lending a singular and beautiful
aspect to the great green-and-gray valley, billowing away to the north,
where dim, broken battlements mounted to the clouds.
The only living thing in Slone's sight was Wildfire. He shone red down
on the green slope.
Slone's heart swelled. This was the setting for that grand horse--a
perfect wild range. But also it seemed the last place where there might
be any chance to trap the stallion. Still that did not alter Slone's
purpose, though it lost to him the joy of former hopes. He rode down
the slope, out upon the billowing floor of the valley. Wildfire looked
back to see his pursuers, and then the solemn stillness broke to a
wild, piercing whistle.
Day after day, camping where night found him, Slone followed the
stallion, never losing sight of him till darkness had fallen. The
valley was immense and the monuments miles apart. But they always
seemed close together and near him. The air magnified everything. Slone
lost track of time. The strange, solemn, lonely days and the silent,
lonely nights, and the endless pursuit, and the wild, weird
valley--these completed the work of years on Slone and he became
satisfied, unthinking, almost savage.
The toil and privation had worn him down and he was like iron. His
garments hung in tatters; his boots were ripped and soleless. Long
since his flour had been used up, and all his supplies except the salt.
He lived on the meat of rabbits, but they were scarce, and the time
came when there were none. Some days he did not eat. Hunger did not
make him suffer. He killed a desert bird now and then, and once a
wildcat crossing the valley. Eventually he felt his strength
diminishing, and then he took to digging out the pack-rats and cooking
them. But these, too, were scarce. At length starvation faced Slone.
But he knew he would not starve. Many times he had been within
rifle-shot of Wildfire. And the grim, forbidding thought grew upon him
that he must kill the stallion. The thought seemed involuntary, but his
mind rejected it. Nevertheless, he knew that if he could not catch the
stallion he would kill him. That had been the end of many a desperate
rider's pursuit of a coveted horse.
While Slone kept on his merciless pursuit, never letting Wildfire rest
by day, time went on just as relentlessly. Spring gave way to early
summer. The hot sun bleached the grass; water-holes failed out in the
valley, and water could be found only in the canyons; and the dry winds
began to blow the sand. It was a sandy valley, green and gray only at a
distance, and out toward the north there were no monuments, and the
slow heave of sand lifted toward the dim walls.
Wildfire worked away from this open valley, back to the south end,
where the great monuments loomed, and still farther back, where they
grew closer, till at length some of them were joined by weathered
ridges to the walls of the surrounding plateau. For all that Slone
could see, Wildfire was in perfect condition. But Nagger was not the
horse he had been. Slone realized that in one way or another the
pursuit was narrowing down to the end.
He found a water-hole at the head of a wash in a split in the walls,
and here he let Nagger rest and graze one whole day--the first day for
a long time that he had not kept the red stallion in sight. That day
was marked by the good fortune of killing a rabbit, and while eating it
his gloomy, fixed mind admitted that he was starving. He dreaded the
next sunrise. But he could not hold it back. There, behind the dark
monuments, standing sentinel-like, the sky lightened and reddened and
burst into gold and pink, till out of the golden glare the sun rose
glorious. And Slone, facing the league-long shadows of the monuments,
rode out again into the silent, solemn day, on his hopeless quest.
For a change Wildfire had climbed high up a slope of talus, through a
narrow pass, rounded over with drifting sand. And Slone gazed down into
a huge amphitheater full of monuments, like all that strange country. A
basin three miles across lay beneath him. Walls and weathered slants of
rock and steep slopes of reddish-yellow sand inclosed this oval
depression. The floor was white, and it seemed to move gently or
radiate with heat-waves. Studying it, Slone made out that the motion
was caused by wind in long bleached grass. He had crossed small areas
of this grass in different parts of the region.
Wildfire's tracks led down into this basin, and presently Slone, by
straining his eyes, made out the red spot that was the stallion.
"He's lookin' to quit the country," soliloquized Slone, as he surveyed
the scene.
With keen, slow gaze Slone studied the lay of wall and slope, and when
he had circled the huge depression he made sure that Wildfire could not
get out except by the narrow pass through which he had gone in. Slone
sat astride Nagger in the mouth of this pass--a wash a few yards wide,
walled by broken, rough rock on one side and an insurmountable slope on
the other.
"If this hole was only little, now," sighed Slone, as he gazed at the
sweeping, shimmering oval floor, "I might have a chance. But down
there--we couldn't get near him."
There was no water in that dry bowl. Slone reflected on the uselessness
of keeping Wildfire down there, because Nagger could not go without
water as long as Wildfire. For the first time Slone hesitated. It
seemed merciless to Nagger to drive him down into this hot, windy hole.
The wind blew from the west, and it swooped up the slope, hot, with the
odor of dry, dead grass.
But that hot wind stirred Slone with an idea, and suddenly he was
tense, excited, glowing, yet grim and hard.
"Wildfire, I'll make you run with your namesake in that high grass,"
called Slone. The speech was full of bitter failure, of regret, of the
hardness of a rider who could not give up the horse to freedom.
Slone meant to ride down there and fire the long grass. In that wind
there would indeed be wildfire to race with the red stallion. It would
perhaps mean his death; at least it would chase him out of that hole,
where to follow him would be useless.
"I'd make you hump now to get away if I could get behind you," muttered
Slone. He saw that if he could fire the grass on the other side the
wind of flame would drive Wildfire straight toward him. The slopes and
walls narrowed up to the pass, but high grass grew to within a few rods
of where Slone stood. But it seemed impossible to get behind Wildfire.
"At night--then--I could get round him," said Slone, thinking hard and
narrowing his gaze to scan the circle of wall and slope. "Why not? ...
No wind at night. That grass would burn slow till mornin'--till the
wind came up--an' it's been west for days."
Suddenly Slone began to pound the patient Nagger and to cry out to him
in wild exultance.
"Old horse, we've got him! ... We've got him! ... We'll put a rope on
him before this time to-morrow!"
Slone yielded to his strange, wild joy, but it did not last long, soon
succeeding to sober, keen thought. He rode down into the bowl a mile,
making absolutely certain that Wildfire could not climb out on that
side. The far end, beyond the monuments, was a sheer wall of rock. Then
he crossed to the left side. Here the sandy slope was almost too steep
for even him to go up. And there was grass that would burn. He returned
to the pass assured that Wildfire had at last fallen into a trap the
like Slone had never dreamed of. The great horse was doomed to run into
living flame or the whirling noose of a lasso.
Then Slone reflected. Nagger had that very morning had his fill of good
water--the first really satisfying drink for days. If he was rested
that day, on the morrow he would be fit for the grueling work possibly
in store for him. Slone unsaddled the horse and turned him loose, and
with a snort he made down the gentle slope for the grass. Then Slone
carried his saddle to a shady spot afforded by a slab of rock and a
dwarf cedar, and here he composed himself to rest and watch and think
and wait.
Wildfire was plainly in sight no more than two miles away. Gradually he
was grazing along toward the monuments and the far end of the great
basin. Slone believed, because the place was so large, that Wildfire
thought there was a way out on the other side or over the slopes or
through the walls. Never before had the far-sighted stallion made a
mistake. Slone suddenly felt the keen, stabbing fear of an outlet
somewhere. But it left him quickly. He had studied those slopes and
walls. Wildfire could not get out, except by the pass he had entered,
unless he could fly.
Slone lay in the shade, his head propped on his saddle, and while
gazing down into the shimmering hollow he began to plan. He calculated
that he must be able to carry fire swiftly across the far end of the
basin, so that he would not be absent long from the mouth of the pass.
Fire was always a difficult matter, since he must depend only on flint
and steel. He decided to wait till dark, build a fire with dead cedar
sticks, and carry a bundle of them with burning ends. He felt assured
that the wind caused by riding would keep them burning. After he had
lighted the grass all he had to do was to hurry back to his station and
there await developments.
The day passed slowly, and it was hot. The heat-waves rose in dark,
wavering lines and veils from the valley. The wind blew almost a gale.
Thin, curling sheets of sand blew up over the crests of the slopes, and
the sound it made was a soft, silken rustling, very low. The sky was a
steely blue above and copper close over the distant walls.
That afternoon, toward the close, Slone ate the last of the meat. At
sunset the wind died away and the air cooled. There was a strip of red
along the wall of rock and on the tips of the monuments, and it
lingered there for long, a strange, bright crown. Nagger was not far
away, but Wildfire had disappeared, probably behind one of the
monuments.
When twilight fell Slone went down after Nagger and, returning with
him, put on bridle and saddle. Then he began to search for suitable
sticks of wood. Farther back in the pass he found stunted dead cedars,
and from these secured enough for his purpose. He kindled a fire and
burnt the ends of the sticks into red embers. Making a bundle of these,
he put them under his arm, the dull, glowing ends backward, and then
mounted his horse.
It was just about dark when he faced down into the valley. When he
reached level ground he kept to the edge of the left slope and put
Nagger to a good trot. The grass and brush were scant here, and the
color of the sand was light, so he had no difficulty in traveling.
From time to time his horse went through grass, and its dry, crackling
rustle, showing how it would burn, was music to Slone. Gradually the
monuments began to loom up, bold and black against the blue sky, with
stars seemingly hanging close over them. Slone had calculated that the
basin was smaller than it really was, in both length and breadth. This
worried him. Wildfire might see or hear or scent him, and make a break
back to the pass and thus escape. Slone was glad when the huge, dark
monuments were indistinguishable from the black, frowning wall. He had
to go slower here, because of the darkness. But at last he reached the
slow rise of jumbled rock that evidently marked the extent of
weathering on that side. Here he turned to the right and rode out into
the valley. The floor was level and thickly overgrown with long, dead
grass and dead greasewood, as dry as tinder. It was easy to account for
the dryness; neither snow nor rain had visited that valley for many
months. Slone whipped one of the sticks in the wind and soon had the
smoldering end red and showering sparks. Then he dropped the stick in
the grass, with curious intent and a strange feeling of regret.
Instantly the grass blazed with a little sputtering roar. Nagger
snorted. "Wildfire!" exclaimed Slone. That word was a favorite one with
riders, and now Slone used it both to call out his menace to the
stallion and to express his feeling for that blaze, already running
wild.
Without looking back Slone rode across the valley, dropping a glowing
stick every quarter of a mile. When he reached the other side there
were a dozen fires behind him, burning slowly, with white smoke rising
lazily. Then he loped Nagger along the side back to the sandy ascent,
and on up to the mouth of the pass. There he searched for tracks.
Wildfire had not gone out, and Slone experienced relief and exultation.
He took up a position in the middle of the narrowest part of the pass,
and there, with Nagger ready for anything, he once more composed
himself to watch and wait.
Far across the darkness of the valley, low down, twelve lines of fire,
widely separated, crept toward one another. They appeared thin and
slow, with only an occasional leaping flame. And some of the black
spaces must have been monuments, blotting out the creeping snail-lines
of red. Slone watched, strangely fascinated.
"What do you think of that?" he said, aloud, and he meant his query for
Wildfire.
As he watched the lines perceptibly lengthened and brightened and pale
shadows of smoke began to appear. Over at the left of the valley the
two brightest fires, the first he had started, crept closer and closer
together. They seemed long in covering distance. But not a breath of
wind stirred, and besides they really might move swiftly, without
looking so to Slone. When the two lines met a sudden and larger blaze
rose.
"Ah!" said the rider, and then he watched the other lines creeping
together. How slowly fire moved, he thought. The red stallion would
have every chance to run between those lines, if he dared. But a wild
horse feared nothing like fire. This one would not run the gantlet of
flames. Nevertheless, Slone felt more and more relieved as the lines
closed. The hours of the night dragged past until at length one long,
continuous line of fire spread level across the valley, its bright, red
line broken only where the monuments of stone were silhouetted against
it.
The darkness of the valley changed. The light of the moon changed. The
radiance of the stars changed. Either the line of fire was finding
denser fuel to consume or it was growing appreciably closer, for the
flames began to grow, to leap, and to flare.
Slone strained his ears for the thud of hoofs on sand.
The time seemed endless in its futility of results, but fleeting after
it had passed; and he could tell how the hours fled by the
ever-recurring need to replenish the little fire he kept burning in the
pass.
A broad belt of valley grew bright in the light, and behind it loomed
the monuments, weird and dark, with columns of yellow and white smoke
wreathing them.
Suddenly Slone's sensitive ear vibrated to a thrilling sound. He leaned
down to place his ear to the sand. Rapid, rhythmic beat of hoofs made
him leap to his feet, reaching for his lasso with right hand and a gun
with his left.
Nagger lifted his head, sniffed the air, and snorted. Slone peered into
the black belt of gloom that lay below him. It would be hard to see a
horse there, unless he got high enough to be silhouetted against that
line of fire now flaring to the sky. But he heard the beat of hoofs,
swift, sharp, louder--louder. The night shadows were deceptive. That
wonderful light confused him, made the place unreal. Was he dreaming?
Or had the long chase and his privations unhinged his mind? He reached
for Nagger. No! The big black was real, alive, quivering, pounding the
sand. He scented an enemy.
Once more Slone peered down into the void or what seemed a void. But
it, too, had changed, lightened. The whole valley was brightening.
Great palls of curling smoke rose white and yellow, to turn back as the
monuments met their crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the
stars. It was such a light as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale
moonlight and dimmed starlight and wan dawn all vague and strange and
shadowy under the wild and vivid light of burning grass.
In the pale path before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened
down into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a
fleeting phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes,
deceived by his mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived
in dreams on some far desert. But what was that beating in his
ears--sharp, swift, even, rhythmic? Never had his ears played him
false. Never had he heard things in his dreams. That running object was
a horse and he was coming like the wind. Slone felt something grip his
heart. All the time and endurance and pain and thirst and suspense and
longing and hopelessness--the agony of the whole endless chase--closed
tight on his heart in that instant.
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.