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. The
strength in him then--the thing rife in him that was note hate,
but something as remorseless--might have been the fiery fruition
of a whole lifetime of vengeful quest. Nothing could have stopped
him.
Venters thought out the race shrewdly. The rider on Bells would
probably drop behind and take to the sage. What he did was of
little moment to Venters. To stop Jerry Card, his evil hidden
career as well as his present flight, and then to catch the
blacks--that was all that concerned Venters. The cattle trail
wound for miles and miles down the slope. Venters saw with a
rider's keen vision ten, fifteen, twenty miles of clear purple
sage. There were no on-coming riders or rustlers to aid Card. His
only chance to escape lay in abandoning the stolen horses and
creeping away in the sage to hide. In ten miles Wrangle could run
Black Star and Night off their feet, and in fifteen he could kill
them outright. So Venters held the sorrel in, letting Card make
the running. It was a long race that would save the blacks.
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