The fighting horse, a little shaken by the impact of his fall, nevertheless whirled with catlike agility to his feet--a beautiful thing to watch. As he brought his forequarters off the earth, he lunged at the rider with open mouth. A sidestep that would have done credit to a pugilist sent the youngster swerving past that danger. He leaped to the saddle at the same time that the blood-bay came to his four feet. The chorus in full cry was around the horse, four or five excited cow- punchers waving their sombreros and yelling for horse or rider, according to the gallantry of the fight. The bay was in the air more than he was on the ground, eleven or twelve hundred pounds of might, writhing, snapping, bolting, halting, sunfishing with devilish cunning, dropping out of the air on one stiff foreleg with an accompanying sway to one side that gave the rider the effect of a cudgel blow at the back of the head and then a whip-snap to part the vertebrae. Whirling on his hind legs, and again flinging himself desperately on the ground, only to fail, come to his feet with the clinging burden once more maddeningly in place, and go again through a maze of fence-rowing and sun-fishing until suddenly he straightened out and bolted down the slope like a runaway locomotive on a downgrade. A terrifying spectacle, but the rider sat erect, with one arm raised high above his head in triumph, and his yell trailing off behind him. From a running gait the stallion fell into a smooth pace--a true wild pacer, his hoofs beating the ground with the force and speed of pistons and hurling himself forward with incredible strides. Horse and rider lurched out of sight among the silver spruce. "By the Lord, wonderful!" cried Vance Cornish. He heard a stifled cry beside him, a cry of infinite pain. "Is--is it over?" And there sat Elizabeth the Indomitable with her face buried in her hands like a girl of sixteen! "Of course it's over," said Vance, wondering profoundly. She seemed to dread to look up. "And--Terence?" "He's all right. Ever hear of a horse that could get that young wildcat out of the saddle? He clings as if he had claws. But--where did he get that red devil?" "Terence ran him down--in the mountains--somewhere," she answered, speaking as one who had only half heard the question. "Two months of constant trailing to do it, I think. But oh, you're right! The horse is a devil! And sometimes I think--" She stopped, shuddering. Vance had returned to the ranch only the day before after a long absence. More and more, after he had been away, he found it difficult to get in touch with things on the ranch. Once he had been a necessary part of the inner life. Now he was on the outside. Terence and Elizabeth were a perfectly completed circle in themselves. CHAPTER 3 "If Terry worries you like this," suggested her brother kindly, "why don't you forbid these pranks?" She looked at him as if in surprise.