In the corral he had no difficulty with the mare.  She came straight to him in spite of all the flopping trappings.  With prickly ears and eyes lighted with kindly curiosity she looked the dusty fellow over.

He slipped the bridle over her head.  When he swung the saddle over her back she merely turned her head and carelessly watched it fall.  And when he drew up the cinches hard, she only stamped in mock anger.  The moment he was in the saddle she tossed her head eagerly, ready to be off.

He looked across the street to the veranda of the hotel, as he passed through the gate of the corral.  The men were standing in a long and awe-stricken line, their eyes wide, their mouths agape.  Whoever Ronicky Doone might be, he was certainly a man who had won the respect of this town.  The men on the veranda looked at Bill Gregg as though he were already a ghost.  He waved his hand defiantly at them and the mare, at a word from him, sprang into a long-striding gallop that whirled them rapidly down the street and out of the village.

The bay mare carried him with amazing speed over the ground.  They rounded the base of the big mountain, and, glancing up at the ragged canyons which chopped the face of the peak, he was glad that he had not attempted that short cut.  If Ronicky Doone could make that trail he was a skillful horseman.

Bill Gregg swung up over the left shoulder of the mountain and found himself looking down on the wide plain which held Stillwater.  The air was crystal-clear and dry; the shoulder of the mountain was high above it; Gregg saw a breathless stretch of the cattle country at one sweep of his eyes.

Stillwater was still a long way off, and far away across the plain he saw a tiny moving dot that grew slowly.  It was the train heading for Stillwater, and that train he must beat to the station.  For a moment his heart stood still; then he saw that the train was distant indeed, and, by the slightest use of the mare’s speed, he would be able to reach the town, two or three minutes ahead of it.

But, just as he was beginning to exult in the victory, after all the hard riding of the past three days, the mare tossed up her head and shortened her stride.  The heart of Gregg stopped, and he went cold.  It was not only the fear that his journey might be ruined, but the fear that something had happened to this magnificent creature beneath him.  He swung to the side in the saddle and watched her gallop.  Certain she went laboring, very much as though she were trying to run against a mighty pull on the reins.

He looked at her head.  It was thrown high, with pricking ears.  Perhaps she was frightened by some foolish thing near the road.  He touched her with the spurs, and she increased her pace to the old length and ease of stride; but, just as he had begun to be reassured, her step shortened and fell to laboring again, and this time she threw her head higher than before.  It was amazing to Bill Gregg; and then it seemed to him that he heard a faint, far whistling, floating down from high above his head.