pealed out--call or laugh or challenge. Sage King, with a fleetness that made
the eyes of Bostil and his riders glisten, took the lead, and then sheered off
to slow down, while Buckles thundered past. Lucy was pulling him hard, and had
him plunging to a halt, when the rider Holley ran out to grasp his bridle.
Buckles was snorting and his ears were laid back. He pounded the ground and
scattered the pebbles.

"No use, Lucy," said Bostil. "You can't beat the King at your own game, even
with a runnin' start."

Lucy Bostil's eyes were blue, as keen as her father's, and now they flashed
like his. She had a hand twisted in the horse's long mane, and as, lithe and
supple, she slipped a knee across his broad back she shook a little gantleted
fist at Bostil's gray racer.

"Sage King, I hate you!" she called, as if the horse were human. "And I'll
beat you some day!"

Bostil swore by the gods his Sage King was the swiftest horse in all that wild
upland country of wonderful horses. He swore the great gray could look back
over his shoulder and run away from any broken horse known to the riders.

Bostil himself was half horse, and the half of him that was human he divided
between love of his fleet racers and his daughter Lucy. He had seen years of
hard riding on that wild Utah border where, in those days, a horse meant all
the world to a man. A lucky strike of grassy upland and good water south of
the Rio Colorado made him rich in all that he cared to own. The Indians, yet
unspoiled by white men, were friendly. Bostil built a boat at the Indian
crossing of the Colorado and the place became known as Bostil's Ford. From
time to time his personality and his reputation and his need brought