No! The big black
was real, alive, quivering, pounding the sand. He scented an enemy.
Once more Slone peered down into the void or what seemed a void. But it, too,
had changed, lightened. The whole valley was brightening. Great palls of
curling smoke rose white and yellow, to turn back as the monuments met their
crests, and then to roll upward, blotting out the stars. It was such a light
as he had never seen, except in dreams. Pale moonlight and dimmed starlight
and wan dawn all vague and strange and shadowy under the wild and vivid light
of burning grass.
In the pale path before Slone, that fanlike slope of sand which opened down
into the valley, appeared a swiftly moving black object, like a fleeting
phantom. It was a phantom horse. Slone felt that his eyes, deceived by his
mind, saw racing images. Many a wild chase he had lived in dreams on some far
desert. But what was that beating in his ears--sharp, swift, even, rhythmic?
Never had his ears played him false. Never had he heard things in his dreams.
That running object was a horse and he was coming like the wind.
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