We'll let them set the pace." Venters knew he bestrode the strongest, swiftest, most tireless horse ever ridden by any rider across the Utah uplands.

Recalling Jane Withersteen's devoted assurance that Night could run neck and neck with Wrangle, and Black Star could show his heels to him, Venters wished that Jane were there to see the race to recover her blacks and in the unqualified superiority of the giant sorrel.

Then Venters found himself thankful that she was absent, for he meant that race to end in Jerry Card's death.

The first flush, the raging of Venters's wrath, passed, to leave him in sullen, almost cold possession of his will.

It was a deadly mood, utterly foreign to his nature, engendered, fostered, and released by the wild passions of wild men in a wild country.