"Lin, if Wildfire gives you the slip he'll have to fly. You've got the best
eyes for tracks of any wrangler in Utah."

Slone accepted the compliment with a fleeting, doubtful smile on his dark
face. He did not reply, and no more was said by his comrades. They rolled with
backs to the fire. Slone put on more wood, for the keen wind was cold and
cutting; and then he lay down, his head in his saddle, with a goatskin under
him and a saddle-blanket over him.

All three were soon asleep. The wind whipped the sand and ashes and smoke over
the sleepers. Coyotes barked from near in darkness, and from the valley ridge
came the faint mourn of a hunting wolf. The desert night grew darker and
colder.

The Stewart brothers were wild-horse hunters for the sake of trades and
occasional sales. But Lin Slone never traded nor sold a horse he had captured.
The excitement of the game, and the lure of the desert, and the love of a
horse were what kept him at the profitless work. His type was rare in the
uplands.

These were the early days of the settlement of Utah, and only a few of the
hardiest and most adventurous pioneers had penetrated the desert in the
southern part of that vast upland. And with them came some of that wild breed
of riders to which Slone and the Stewarts belonged. Horses were really more
important and necessary than men; and this singular fact gave these lonely
riders a calling.

Before the Spaniards came there were no horses in the West. Those explorers
left or lost horses all over the southwest. Many of them were Arabian horses
of purest blood. American explorers and travelers, at the outset of the