The colt had been almost the last of the two score horses when their startled flight began; already he was seeking the place that was rightfully his, already he had passed half of the herd and running like some great greyhound, was eating up the distance which lay between his outstretched nose and Lady Lightfoot's flickering hoofs. A horse to be seen in a flash by a knowing eye even in a herd many times bigger than this one. A king of a horse, standing a hand taller than the tallest of his companions, with great flowing muscles moving liquidly, with iron lungs under a vast iron chest, with a neck every fine line of which revealed the racing thoroughbred, with tireless strength in the tensing shoulders and hips, with speed in the delicately formed, slender legs; running easily, every leaping stride hurling his great body in advance of some one of the other horses, his floating mane and tail spun silk that flashed in the sun like shimmering gold, his flashing hoofs like a deer's for dainty grace, his coat a deep, rich, red bay.
"Watch him run!" shouted Big Bill. "Watch him run!"
Two lengths behind Lady Lightfoot, a length … and then Little Saxon had slipped by, flashed by, passed like a gleam of summer sunlight, and the mare snapped viciously at the lean, clean body that brushed against her own, robbing her of her place. Big Bill laughed joyously.
"Jealous as a cat, huh, Red? See that?"
"And no man has ever ridden him," muttered Shandon. "Only one man is ever going to ride you, Little Saxon."
But that day they did not take Little Saxon with them back to the home corrals; it would be many a day yet before Little Saxon's training began, before his proud spirit compromised with steel and leather and a master's hand.
With half the distance to the far end of the little valley passed, Little Saxon was a length ahead of Lady Lightfoot, his quivering nostrils scenting danger behind, free range and freedom ahead. Thus Little Saxon first, Lady Lightfoot jealously guarding and keeping her place as second in the headlong flight, a slim barrelled sorrel close at the Lady's heels, the rest of the horses following in a close packed body, the fleeing animals came to the natural bulwark which the mountains lifted before them. Their ropes swinging in ever widening loops, hissing swifter and swifter until in broadening circles they sang shrilly, Wayne Shandon and Big Bill swept on after them.
"Lightfoot first!" cried Shandon sharply. "It's too rocky, Bill—"
The ground was too broken to chance putting a rope over the defiant neck of the three year old who had never known what it was to have hemp touch his lithe body. With Lady Lightfoot it was different. She would leap aside, she would throw her head one way or the other as she saw the lasso leave the hand of her would-be captor; but once it touched her she would stop stone still, too wise, too experienced to struggle against the inevitable.
At last the fleeing horses stopped, whirled and with up-pricked ears and flashing eyes waited and watched. Lady Lightfoot's angry snort trumpeted her fear and defiance; she moved not so much as a muscle except of her eyes which swept swiftly back and forth from Big Bill to Shandon, from Shandon to Big Bill. Then, as almost at the same instant two ropes sped their hissing way toward her she leaped forward, swerved aside, dropped her head a little—and then, instead of breaking into a wild flight, she bunched her four feet and slid to a trembling standstill before either rope had tightened about a steel saddle horn.