Wrangle pulled hard on a tight rein. He galloped out of the lane,
down the shady border of the grove, and hauled up at the
watering-trough, where he pranced and champed his bit. Venters
got off and filled his canteen while the horse drank. The dogs,
Ring and Whitie, came trotting up for their drink. Then Venters
remounted and turned Wrangle toward the sage.
A wide, white trail wound away down the slope. One keen, sweeping
glance told Venters that there was neither man nor horse nor
steer within the limit of his vision, unless they were lying down
in the sage. Ring loped in the lead and Whitie loped in the rear.
Wrangle settled gradually into an easy swinging canter, and
Venters's thoughts, now that the rush and flurry of the start
were past, and the long miles stretched before him, reverted to a
calm reckoning of late singular coincidences.
There was the night ride of Tull's, which, viewed in the light of
subsequent events, had a look of his covert machinations; Oldring
and his Masked Rider and his rustlers riding muffled horses; the
report that Tull had ridden out that morning with his man Jerry
on the trail to Glaze, the strange disappearance of Jane
Withersteen's riders, the unusually determined attempt to kill
the one Gentile still in her employ, an intention frustrated, no
doubt, only by Judkin's magnificent riding of her racer, and
lastly the driving of the red herd.
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