第37章

So she kept on, now and then gazing at the smoke.As she grew nearer to the first monument she was surprised, then amazed, at its height and surpassing size.It was mountain-high--a grand tower--smooth, worn, glistening, yellow and red.The trail she had followed petered out in a deep wash, and beyond that she crossed no more trails.The sage had grown meager and the greasewoods stunted and dead; and cacti appeared on barren places.The grass had not failed, but it was not rich grass such as the horses and cattle grazed upon miles back on the slope.The air was hot down here.The breeze was heavy and smelled of fire, and the sand was blowing here and there.She had a sense of the bigness, the openness of this valley, and then she realized its wildness and strangeness.These lonely, isolated monuments made the place different from any she had visited.They did not seem mere standing rocks.They seemed to retreat all the time as she approached, and they watched her.They interested her, made her curious.What had formed all these strange monuments?

Here the ground was level for miles and miles, to slope gently up to the bases of these huge rocks.In an old book she had seen pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, but these appeared vaster, higher, and stranger, and they were sheerly perpendicular.

Suddenly Sage King halted sharply, shot up his ears, and whistled.Lucy was startled.That from the King meant something.Hastily, with keen glance she swept the foreground.A mile on, near the monument, was a small black spot.It seemed motionless.But the King's whistle had proved it to be a horse.When Lucy had covered a quarter of the intervening distance she could distinguish the horse and that there appeared some thing strange about his position.Lucy urged Sage King into a lope and soon drew nearer.The black horse had his head down, yet he did not appear to be grazing.He was as still as a statue.He stood just outside a clump of greasewood and cactus.

Suddenly a sound pierced the stillness.The King jumped and snorted in fright.

For an instant Lucy's blood ran cold, for it was a horrible cry.Then she recognized it as the neigh of a horse in agony.She had heard crippled and dying horses utter that long-drawn and blood-curdling neigh.The black horse had not moved, so the sound could not have come from him.Lucy thought Sage King acted more excited than the occasion called for.Then remembering her father's warning, she reined in on top of a little knoll, perhaps a hundred yards from where the black horse stood, and she bent her keen gaze forward.

It was a huge, gaunt, shaggy black horse she saw, with the saddle farther up on his shoulders than it should have been.He stood motionless, as if utterly exhausted.His forelegs were braced, so that he leaned slightly back.Then Lucy saw a rope.It was fast to the saddle and stretched down into the cactus.

There was no other horse in sight, nor any living thing.The immense monument dominated the scene.It seemed stupendous to Lucy, sublime, almost frightful.

She hesitated.She knew there was another horse, very likely at the other end of that lasso.Probably a rider had been thrown, perhaps killed.Certainly a horse had been hurt.Then on the moment rang out the same neigh of agony, only weaker and shorter.Lucy no longer feared an ambush.That was a cry which could not be imitated by a man or forced from a horse.There was probably death, certainly suffering, near at hand.She spurred the King on.

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.