There was a little slope to descend, a wash to cross, a bench to climb—­and then she rode up to the black horse.  Sage King needed harder treatment than Lucy had ever given him.

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, pulling him down.  Suddenly, as she felt him tremble, she realized that he was frightened.  “That’s funny!” Then when she got him quiet she looked around.

The black horse was indeed huge.  His mane, his shaggy flanks, were lathered as if he had been smeared with heavy soap-suds.  He raised his head to look at her.  Lucy, accustomed to horses all her life, saw that this one welcomed her arrival.  But he was almost ready to drop.

Two taut lassoes stretched from the pommel of his saddle down a little into a depression full of brush and cactus and rocks.  Then Lucy saw a red horse.  He was down in a bad position.  She heard his low, choking heaves.  Probably he had broken legs or back.  She could not bear to see a horse in pain.  She would do what was possible, even to the extent of putting him out of his misery, if nothing else could be done.  Yet she scanned the surroundings closely, and peered into the bushes and behind the rocks before she tried to urge Sage King closer.  He refused to go nearer, and Lucy dismounted.

The red horse was partly hidden by overbending brush.  He had plunged into a hole full of cactus.  There was a hackamore round his nose and a tight noose round his neck.  The one round his neck was also round his forelegs.  And both lassoes were held taut by the black horse.  A torn and soiled rider’s scarf hung limp round the red horse’s nose, kept from falling off by the hackamore.

“A wild horse, a stallion, being broken!” exclaimed Lucy, instantly grasping the situation.  “Oh! where’s the rider?”

She gazed around, ran to and fro, glanced down the little slope, and beyond, but she did not see anything resembling the form of a man.  Then she ran back.

Lucy took another quick look at the red stallion.  She did not believe either his legs or back were hurt.  He was just played out and tangled and tied in the ropes, and could not get up.  The shaggy black horse stood there braced and indomitable.  But he, likewise, was almost ready to drop.  Looking at the condition of both horses and the saddle and ropes, Lucy saw what a fight there had been, and a race!  Where was the rider?  Thrown, surely, and back on the trail, perhaps dead or maimed.

Lucy went closer to the stallion so that she could almost touch him.  He saw her.  He was nearly choked.  Foam and blood wheezed out with his heaves.  She must do something quickly.  And in her haste she pricked her arms and shoulders on the cactus.

She led the black horse closer in, letting the ropes go, slack.  The black seemed as glad of that release as she was.  What a faithful brute he looked!  Lucy liked his eyes.

Then she edged down in among the cactus and brush.  The red horse no longer lay in a strained position.  He could lift his head.  Lucy saw that the noose still held tight round his neck.  Fearlessly she jerked it loose.  Then she backed away, but not quite out of his reach.  He coughed and breathed slowly, with great heaves.  Then he snorted.