“Now, what shall I do?” she queried.  “I’ll take the back trail of these horses.  They certainly hadn’t been here long before I saw them.  And the rider may be close.  If not I’ll take the horses home.”

She slipped the noose from the stallion’s head, leaving the hackamore, and, coiling the loose lasso, she hung it over the pommel of the black’s saddle.  Then she took up his bridle.

“Come on,” she called.

The black followed her, and the stallion, still fast to him by the lasso Lucy had left tied, trooped behind with bowed head.  Lucy was elated.  But Sage King did not like the matter at all.  Lucy had to drop the black’s bridle and catch the King, and then ride back to lead the other again.

A broad trail marked the way the two horses had come, and it led off to the left, toward where the monuments were thickest, and where the great sections of wall stood, broken and battlemented.  Lucy was hard put to it to hold Sage King, but the horses behind plodded along.  The black horse struck Lucy as being an ugly, but a faithful and wonderful animal.  He understood everything.  Presently she tied the bridle she was leading him by to the end of her own lasso, and thus let him drop back a few yards, which lessened the King’s fretting.

Intent on the trail, Lucy failed to note time or distance till the looming and frowning monuments stood aloft before her.  What weird effect they had!  Each might have been a colossal statue left there to mark the work of the ages.  Lucy realized that the whole vast valley had once been solid rock, just like the monuments, and through the millions of years the softer parts had eroded and weathered and blown away—­gone with the great sea that had once been there.  But the beauty, the solemnity, the majesty of these monuments fascinated her most.  She passed the first one, a huge square butte, and then the second, a ragged, thin, double shaft, and then went between two much alike, reaching skyward in the shape of monstrous mittens.  She watched and watched them, sparing a moment now and then to attend to the trail.  She noticed that she was coming into a region of grass, and faint signs of water in the draws.  She was getting high again, not many miles now from the wall of rock.

All at once Sage King shied, and Lucy looked down to see a man lying on the ground.  He lay inert.  But his eyes were open—­dark, staring eyes.  They moved.  And he called.  But Lucy could not understand him.

In a flash she leaped off the King.  She ran to the prostrate man—­dropped to her knees.

“Oh!” she cried.  His face was ghastly.  “Oh! are you—­you badly hurt?”

“Lift me—­my head,” he said, faintly.

She raised his head.  What a strained, passionate, terrible gaze he bent upon the horses.

“Boy, they’re mine—­the black an’ the red!” he cried.

“They surely must be,” replied Lucy.  “Oh! tell me.  Are you hurt?”