of the wind, and the southern portion of the house, though still erect, seemed tottering and rotten throughout and holding together until at a final blow the whole structure would crumple at once.
To the stables, hardly less ruinous than the big house, Pierre and Wilbur took their horses, and a series of whinnies greeted them from the stalls. To look down that line of magnificent heads raised above the partitions of the stalls was like glancing into the stud of some crowned head who made hunting and racing his chief end in life, for these were animals worthy of the sport of kings.
They were chosen each from among literal hundreds and thousands, and they were cared for far more tenderly than the masters cared for themselves. There was a reason in it, for upon their speed and endurance depended the life of the outlaw. Moreover, the policy of Jim Boone was one of actual "long riding."
Here he had come to a pause for a few days to recuperate his horses and his men. To-morrow, perhaps, he would be on the spur again and sweeping off to a distant point in the mountain desert to strike and be gone again before the rangers knew well that he had been there. Very rarely did one settler have another neighbor at a distance of less than two hundred miles. It meant arduous and continual riding, and a horse with any defect was worse than useless because the speed of the gang had to be the speed of the slowest horse in the lot.
It was some time before the two long riders had completed the grooming of their horses and had
