against the black background of riders and horses, and shots rang

out. Bullets struck far in front of Venters, and 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 or merely to
check advance, they were enough to fire that waitingferocity 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 sideways 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 with a swift
movement, 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 whim 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 he made out a third rider,
carrying a strange-appearing bundle and 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 Bells--the 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 white hot wrath
inflamed Venters that he fought himself to see with clearer gaze.

"It's Jerry Card!" he exclaimed, instantly. "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 lengthened his stride

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 hard-packed 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 devotedassurance 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 note hate,

but something as remorseless--might have been the fiery fruition
of a whole lifetime of vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped

him.
Venters thought out the race shrewdly. 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 on-coming 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,

and 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 red

flash of his red face. 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
far-sightedness. 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 facts

that neither Card nor the rustler actually" target="_blank" title="ad.事实上；实际上">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 lower 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