Now he was below the tree and near the spot where he had seen Flame entering the tall cane. His eyes followed the line of stalks from where he stood to the tree. There was no break in the line, no evidence of broken or bent stalks to disclose Flame’s path. Steve then turned in the opposite direction, his gaze still following the edge of the cane. There was nothing there either to show that the horse had gone through. Knowing that Flame had passed the tree, Steve began walking farther down the valley. He had gone about three hundred yards when he came upon the broken stalks. Quickly he followed the path swept clear by the running horse.

THE CHASE

10

The field of wild cane was no wider than a hundred yards at most, and when Steve emerged from it he found that there was a long, gradual slope to the yellow, precipitous walls. He looked around for some trace of Flame’s trail, but his untrained eyes found no evidence of flying hoofs over the grassy plain.

For some time he stood there undecided, sweeping his eyes over the yellow walls, then along their base. Finally he set out, traveling down the valley toward a thin cloud of vapor beginning to rise from the ground about a mile away. Surely, he decided, there was no other direction in which Flame could have gone. The base of the walls was an unbroken line of sheer, bare rock which towered hundreds of feet into the sky. Like himself, the red stallion could have had no alternative but to go down the valley.

The ground before him began to fall gradually toward the hollow from which the mist rose. Steve stopped to rest for a moment and looked behind him at the valley, at the bending cane and beyond that to the valley floor, rich in grass and colorful foliage. Then he turned back to the desolate land ahead of him, throwing the rope he carried over his shoulder. He was near enough to the vapors to smell their foul stench. They came from a patch of marshland, as he had thought. And, as the sun began to rise above the walls to the east, the vapors thickened as though in resentment against Steve’s approach.

But the sickening smells of rotting vegetation did not stop him; instead Steve’s pace quickened as he approached the marsh. He felt certain that Flame had come this way, and with the ground already becoming soft and wet beneath his feet, there was the possibility of finding the stallion’s hoofprints. Upon reaching the border of the dismal swamp, Steve came to a stop. To the left the vapors reached almost to the walls, and to his right they extended almost to the cane. How deep the marsh went he could not tell.