Near dusk their fourth day in the high country, Farron spotted the black up on a knoll keeping watch over his bunch, maybe seventy or eighty head in all. He knew right off he had never before seen such a horse. He motioned to Ignacio. They were two hundred feet apart, but Ignacio understood his hand signals. Not now. Wait for morning.

The wind was blowing their way and they had some cover from a stand of trees, mostly spruce and ponderosa pine. Farron was still in the tree line so he was able to get a good look and work out a plan. Ignacio didn’t like it. He had given up roping wild stallions the same time he gave up whores, on his fiftieth birthday. He agreed to help haze the stallion into Farron’s loop and once the horse was roped, he’d come along with a second loop. Farron had a roan roping horse called Pink, a good quarter horse who could outrun a thoroughbred up to about a half mile and stand up to a charge from a twelve-hundred-pound steer. He was sure the roan could catch the black in a short dash over rough ground, as long as they could get within a hundred yards before the mustang spotted them. They would wait until the horse had a good feed and plenty of water to bog him down, then Farron would ease up as close as he could get. When the black saw him, they would have the sort of horse race that makes a man feel there might be something in this life better than a woman.

Farron was awake well before sunup. He made sure that Pink went easy on the water and had only a bag of oats to eat. The black and his herd had drifted about three-quarters of a mile to the southeast. Farron and Ignacio circled to the north of the band, keeping a low ridge between the mustangs and themselves. They found the stallion grazing quietly in the half-light before sunup. Farron wanted to let him eat his fill. He backed the roan off to the far side of the ridge, dismounted, squatted on his heels with his hat brim pulled low over his eyes to block the rising sun. Finally the black lifted his head, sauntered down to the creek. When he had drunk his fill, he shook his head, flinging droplets from his nose, then climbed a low rise a half mile distant, where he could keep an eye on his band.