The spring was so much of a change after the parched desert that she bedded down close beside it and rested until morning. With the gray dawn she was up and feeding on the lush grass. For several hours she fed, then she drank deeply and faced northward. Again she set her pace at a fast lope. 6. Midnight Lady Ebony held her course until late afternoon. She was high in the red foothills when she halted. A little stream bubbled over red rocks, willow grew along the banks, and the grass was green. On each side of the water red rocks rose high against the sky. Along the base of the cliffs lay great slabs and piles of stone, broken loose from the walls by wind and rain, piled in confusion over the floor of the wild gorge. Lady Ebony moved among the tumbled rocks. A bobcat bounded from a thicket of rose brier where he had been hunting cottontails. Lady Ebony snorted and shook her head. She kept moving slowly along the stream until she came to a grove of cottonwoods. Close beside the grove grew a dense thicket of tangled brush. Lady Ebony dropped her head and began pulling the tender gamma grass. She did not look up at the Crazy Kill Range again. After she had eaten her fill she drank at the stream and lay down. Sunset flamed across the sky and died into cool shadows. The red bluffs changed from deep purple to slate gray. By almost unnoticeable degrees the moon brightened and flooded the valley and the cliffs changed color to match the white light. Now they were silvery with bands and squares of black shadows across them. And the stars hung, big and white, close to the ragged tops of the rims. In this garden of red rocks close beside the little stream a colt was born. The morning sun beating down on the floor of the gorge shone on a wobbly little horse crowding close to Lady Ebony’s side. The black colt jerked his curly tail and butted his head against his mother’s side as he got his first breakfast. His legs were long and heavy-boned. They were wobbly legs but they showed promise of great strength. His head was finely molded like his mother’s, and his sleek coat was all black, except for a white star in his forehead. That white star and the heavy-boned frame were his inheritance from his father, the chestnut stallion.