In a moment they
were mere fantastic shadows galloping up the hill through the smothery
gloom.
Then came Jim, leading Rex and a horse for himself; Sir Redmond had
saddled his gray and was waiting. Beatrice sprang into the saddle and
took the lead, with nerves a-tingle. The wind that rushed against her
face was hot and reeking with smoke. Her nostrils drank greedily the
tang it carried.
"You gipsy!" cried Sir Redmond, peering at her through the murky gloom.
"This--is living!" she laughed, and urged Rex faster.
So they raced recklessly over the hills, toward where the night was
aglow. Before them the wagon pounded over untrailed prairie sod, with
shadowy figures fleeing always before.
Here, wild cattle rushed off at either side, to stop and eye them
curiously as they whirled past. There, a coyote, squatting unseen upon a
distant pinnacle, howled, long-drawn and quavering, his weird protest
against the solitudes in which he wandered.
The dusk deepened to dark, and they could no longer see the racing
shadows. The rattle of the wagon came mysteriously back to them through
the black.
Once Rex stumbled over a rock and came near falling, but Beatrice only
laughed and urged him on, unheeding Sir Redmond's call to ride slower.
They splashed through a shallow creek, and came upon the wagon, halted
that the cowboys might fill the barrels with water.
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