Then that new feeling was there again. It probed the ravaged body of the red stallion until it found and engulfed his heart. Shaking his fiery head, he pawed the ground. That new feeling had come during his fight with the black-and-white stallion and now was part of him. His splendid body trembled, as always before an encounter with a foe. But he knew it was different this time. His trembling was not caused by tension, excitement or ruthlessness, but by a fear that now dominated every inch of him. Accepting it, he turned again, running with long, ground-covering bounds away from the figure that was tracking him.

Steve had crossed the short grass and was walking alongside the dry stream bed when he saw Flame turn and head up the grassy slope toward the base of the walls. He didn’t know whether to be surprised that the stallion had run away from him. He had never tracked a wild horse before. Yet momentarily he remembered the savageness of the Piebald, born wild as Flame had been. The Piebald hadn’t run away, but then he had had a band to protect; and that, Steve decided, must be the difference in their reactions to the sight of him.

If I can just get close enough to show him I don’t mean any harm, Steve thought. If I can just do that.

The walls toward which Flame ran were the highest in the valley, rising almost a thousand feet, with their summits touching the sky. At their base the rock was neither sheer nor precipitous, Steve found, but pierced with narrow crags and chasms. And into one of those indentations in the walls Steve saw Flame suddenly disappear!

Walking faster, Steve went up the slope until creeping shadows from the walls above swallowed the brightness of the late morning sun. Ahead of him was the dark tunnel from which the stream came, and a little to the left of it, the narrow chasm where Flame had gone.

The chasm led ever downward. Steve hadn’t gone very far when he realized that no river had cut this passage; possibly a giant disturbance of nature, such as an earthquake, had made the cleavage through the walls. The course was straight, with no twisting or turning as in the gorge. The walls overhead were jagged and torn, so much so that at times they shut out the blue sky from Steve’s wondering gaze.

As he walked down the chasm, he felt the great gusts of wind that came intermittently at him. His pace became faster, for he knew that only an outlet to the sea could cause such a wind within the walls of the island. Where was Flame taking him? To what would this trail lead? Leaning into the wind, which was now blowing steadily, Steve broke into a half-run down the steep grade.