“You’re safe now, Flame,” he said. “You won’t sink any deeper. And I’ll be back soon. Then you’ll be free again to go back to your band.”

With one last look at his horse, Steve left the chamber at a half-run. And as he made his way back through the outer cavern and up the tunnel leading to the chasm, he was unmindful of the tiredness in his legs and the long trek back to camp.

STEVE MAKES A PROMISE

12

Steve slowed down a little as he went through the chasm and then the smaller valley where he had first seen Flame that morning, hurrying again when he made his way to the gorge that would take him to Blue Valley and Pitch.

After leaving the cavern and Flame, Steve had moved as one in a stupor, his eyes unseeing and glazed, his senses numbed; yet even so his feet had held to the trail as though they had always known it. The lack of expression on his face and the limpness of his muscles were those of a person who had passed through a great crisis without realizing exactly what the crisis or the outcome had been.

But slowly, as he went along, the knowledge penetrated his dazed mind that somehow he had saved Flame from certain death. He knew that he had placed a noose about Flame’s girth—a noose he had made with his rope. He knew that the noose was attached to the end of the chain that hung from the crane over the pit. He remembered that he was going back to camp to get Pitch’s help in swinging Flame clear of the pit. But other than that he remembered little. The details of what he had done from the time of his fall in the cavern until he had stood before Flame, knowing that the stallion was safe from the danger of sinking deeper into the quicksand, weren’t clear in his mind.

He glanced up at the sun as he entered the gorge. From its height he decided that it was early afternoon. But was it the same day? Had it been only this morning that he had set out looking for Flame? Surely it was much longer ago than that!

Steve followed the twisting, turning dry stream bed and passed the yellow overhanging cliffs. Gradually his eyes began to lose their glazed look.

“Yes,” he finally admitted aloud, “it has to be the same day. Just as it was only two days ago that I first set foot on Azul Island.”