News of the race, before the winter had come, more than six months before the day set in June, had gone over the crest of the Sierra and appeared in the papers at Reno. It had flashed across telegraph wires to Sacramento; had been talk for a day in many a place where sporting men foregather in San Francisco. Men who had never heard of them before came to know of Sledge Hume and Wayne Shandon, of Endymion and Little Saxon. And still Little Saxon was but a half broken colt. "It's all right," grunted Willie Dart to himself, kicking his heels from the top of the corral and watching his Noble Benefactor risking his life in the company of a great, belligerent red-bay horse. "It's all right, seeing I'm here. Suppose I wasn't, suppose I was still dodging cops on Broadway, then what? Then Sledgehammer Hume would put some death-on-rats in Hell Fire's hay, or pick Red off with a shot gun, and who cops onto the five thou? A man don't have to have a fortune teller for a mother to get wised up to that." Little by little the proud spirited horse learned his lesson. He came to see that his destiny lay in the hands of the man who came out to him daily. He gave over trying to beat the man to death with his flying heels; he no longer sought to tear at him with bared teeth; he recognised that it was as futile to seek to hurl the man from his back as to break the strong cinch which held the saddle; that he might run until he killed himself, but that he could not run away from the man who rode him and laughed. He learned that in this world that had been so utterly free for him there was one single being who was his master in all things, whom he must obey. And, when obedience came, pleasure in that obedience followed, and trust and faith and love. That year winter came in as it had not come to these mountains for twenty-seven years, early, unheralded and hard. The cattle and horses had not yet been moved down to the lower ranges when one day, in mid-afternoon, the air thickened, bursting black clouds drove up from the southwest, the forests rocked moaning and shuddering under the smashing impact of the sudden storm, the sun was lost in a darkness that grew impenetrable toward the time of dusk, and the skies opened to a downpour of rain. For upwards of an hour the great drops drove unceasingly into the dry ground while giant daggers of lightning stabbed at the earth that seemed to bellow its torment in reverberating roars. Then the slanting rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun, the wind went howling through the forests and was gone, and in the stillness which ushered in the true night the snow began.