Bostil was wont to say that
in all the world there could hardly be a grander view than the outlook down
that gray sea of rolling sage, down to the black-fringed plateaus and the
wild, blue-rimmed and gold-spired horizon.
One morning in early spring, as was Bostil's custom, he ordered the racers to
be brought from the corrals and turned loose on the slope. He loved to sit
there and watch his horses graze, but ever he saw that the riders were close
at hand, and that the horses did not get out on the slope of sage. He sat back
and gloried in the sight. He owned bands of mustangs; near by was a field of
them, fine and mettlesome and racy; yet Bostil had eyes only for the blooded
favorites. Strange it was that not one of these was a mustang or a broken wild
horse, for many of the riders' best mounts had been captured by them or the
Indians. And it was Bostil's supreme ambition to own a great wild stallion.
There was Plume, a superb mare that got her name from the way her mane swept
in the wind when she was on the ran; and there was Two Face, like a coquette,
sleek and glossy and running and the huge, rangy bay, Dusty Ben; and the black
stallion Sarchedon; and lastly Sage King, the color of the upland sage, a
racer in build, a horse splendid and proud and beautiful.
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