So with few words, each man's thoughts wandering as chance and the river and mountains directed them, Shandon and Big Bill rode slowly. That trail brought them at last down close to the edge of the stream as the banks on either hand drew closer together until finally the water choked and fumed and thundered through a narrow pass. Here they must turn away from its course, climbing a steep shoulder of the mountain, making a difficult way along a seldom used trail, until they came to the crest of the ridge which shot down from the right. Another fifty yards, almost level going, a steep descent and suddenly the fury of the river was but a faint rumbling in their ears, the stillness of the mountains crept down on them and they were at the margin of Laughter Lake. With a sigh long, deep, lung filling, Wayne Shandon curbed his horse to a standstill. Big Bill turned his head away and a little hurriedly sought for his "makings." For Big Bill had a memory, as so many sons of the frontier places have, a memory that filed and kept record of little things as well as of what the world calls big things. He remembered the day when Wayne Shandon had last ridden here, just the day before Arthur was killed. Wayne and Arthur had come here together; Arthur with some business reason, of course; equally of course Wayne in a mere spirit of idling. The younger brother had ridden along to try out a new rifle he had bought-- "Come on, Bill. Let's find the horses." Wayne leaned forward suddenly in the saddle, loosened his reins and touched his horse's sides with his spurred heels. And so they raced along the side of the lake as they had raced from the range house, Red Reckless sitting straight in the saddle, his head lifted, his broad hat pushed far back, his tall, powerful body swaying gracefully, easily with his horse's stride. They found Lady Lightfoot with a herd of half wild animals in a little hollow beyond the head of the lake. A great snorting and stamping, a flinging aloft of proud heads upon arching necks, the flurry of manes and tails, black, red, white, all confused in a rush of colour, the hammering thud of unshod hoofs on soft grassy soil and the herd had followed Lady Lightfoot's lead in wild flight toward the far end of the tiny valley. A wonderful creature was Lady Lightfoot, trim and slender and graceful as a maiden, her coat a little rough from her year in the woods, her silken mane snarled, but her spirit showing in the toss of her head, the cock of her ears, the flare of her nostrils, the fire of her eyes. "Watch!" yelled Big Bill as he and Shandon thundered along after them, their ropes already in their hands, nooses widening. "See who takes her lead away from her!" It was half a mile to the far end of the little valley where the almost sheer pitch of the mountains would bring the fleeing animals to a stop. And before they had gone a hundred yards Wayne Shandon's eyes had discovered Little Saxon.