In the canyon the big stallion had settled down to the grim job of lashing his mares into movement. They were not able to go fast but he kept them pounding along, just ahead of the yelling hunters. Their gaunt bellies were drawn and their dry nostrils flared red inside their dust-caked rims. The Navajos were shouting to one another, their spirits high. They were sure of their catch now and eager to close in as soon as the mares quit.
Then the dusk of evening came and with it the downpour of rain. Nowhere in the world outside the tropics can so much water fall in so short a time as in the desert. The storm was bad luck for the hunters, but it spelled escape for the wild horses. It blotted out everything, bringing sudden, inky night. Its rushing, swirling waters wiped out the tracks of the horses. The chestnut stallion played wise. He took a side canyon, forcing his charges out on a rocky ridge. From that canyon they crossed another ridge and turned north. The big stallion was headed out of the desert.
The hunters spread out and worked up and down the canyon but the darkness and rain defeated them. They finally gave up and turned their ponies toward their camp.
All that night Lady Ebony kept moving. The storm passed and the moon came out with stars beyond it, stars that hung low over the barren country, brilliant with red and blue lights winking outside white centers.
A pair of gray wolves flashed past like shadows. They leaped along, side by side, shoulder to shoulder. One was a big, broad-chested fellow with a wide muzzle and frost-cropped ears. The other was a slim gray one with slender legs and body. They paid no attention to Lady Ebony. They were not hunting, they were running, answering the call of spring, heading for a trysting place on a barren ridge.
Lady Ebony heard them holding their spring concert on a high knoll. They howled and snarled and yelped. There was much yearning, much that sounded like deep laughter in their song, and there was tenderness in the notes of the slim gray one. In their mating time they had lost the savagery of winter. There was no specter of famine in the springtime, no blasting blizzards, no deep snow. There was food and there was an urge to find a snug den.
Something of the feelings expressed by the gray wolves filled Lady Ebony. Just before dawn she halted and began feeding. She fed on through the morning. She saw no other horses and heard no savage yells. At midday she lay down and rested until late afternoon.
When she moved on she headed north, toward the snowy ramparts of the Crazy Kill Range, and she went at a long, ground-devouring lope. That night she halted at a spring in the lower foothills. Berrybushes and willow grew around the spring and there was tall grass. Lady Ebony pulled the juicy grass contentedly. She was glad to be away from the teeth and smashing hoofs of the chestnut stallion. She did not miss the herd at all.
The spring was so much of a change after the parched desert that she bedded down close beside it and rested until morning. With the gray dawn she was up and feeding on the lush grass. For several hours she fed, then she drank deeply and faced northward. Again she set her pace at a fast lope.