It was a sandy valley, green and gray only at a distance, and out toward the north there were no monuments, and the slow heave of sand lifted toward the dim walls.
Wildfire worked away from this open valley, back to the south end, where the great monuments loomed, and still farther back, where they grew closer, till at length some of them were joined by weathered ridges to the walls of the surrounding plateau.

For all that Slone could see, Wildfire was in perfect condition.

But Nagger was not the horse he had been.

Slone realized that in one way or another the pursuit was narrowing down to the end.
He found a water-hole at the head of a wash in a split in the walls, and here he let Nagger rest and graze one whole day--the first day for a long time that he had not kept the red stallion in sight.

That day was marked by the good fortune of killing a rabbit, and while eating it his gloomy, fixed mind admitted that he was starving.