Strangely and doggedly, however, Venters
clung to his foreboding of Card's downfall.
The wind died away; the red sun topped the far distant western
rise of slope; and the long, creeping purple shadows lengthened.
The rims of the canyons gleamed crimson and the deep clefts
appeared to belch forth blue smoke. Silence enfolded the scene.
It was broken by a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the
thudding of heavy hoofs. Venters sprang erect and wheeled south.
Along the canyon rim, near the edge, came Wrangle, once more in
thundering flight.
Venters gasped in amazement. Had the wild sorrel gone mad? His
head was high and twisted, in a most singular position for a
running horse. Suddenly Venters descried a frog-like shape
clinging to Wrangle's neck. Jerry Card! Somehow he had straddled
Wrangle and now stuck like a huge burr. But it was his strange
position and the sorrel's wild scream that shook Venters's
nerves. Wrangle was pounding toward the turn where the trail went
down. He plunged onward like a blind horse. More than one of his
leaps took him to the very edge of the precipice.
Jerry Card was bent forward with his teeth fast in the front of
Wrangle's nose! Venters saw it, and there flashed over him a
memory of this trick of a few desperate riders. He even thought
of one rider who had worn off his teeth in this terrible hold to
break or control desperate horses.
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