The Island Stallion's Fury Read Online Free

finished Steve took him along the southern wall of the valley toward the wild cane on the opposite side. Just before they reached it, they came to the cleavage in the wall. Steve turned Flame into the long neck of Bottle Canyon.
    The ground was soft with good grass and free of rock. Flame went from a walk to a trot, and Steve let him go. For a hundred yards the high walls of the canyon rose close on either side, then they widened, forming the great base of Bottle Canyon.
    The grass here too was good and cropped low, so Steve knew that Flame used the canyon for grazing. The high yellow walls rose all around them and Steve didn’t see where it was possible to reach Lookout Ledge from the canyon floor. But Flame seemed to know where he was going, so Steve let him alone.
    The stallion went toward the far wall, which Steveknew was the only barrier between them and the spit. As they neared it, Flame veered to the right, and Steve saw the trail running up along the right wall. He thought it too steep and narrow, and sought to check Flame’s speed. But the stallion only shook his head, then gathered himself and lurched up the trail. The first few feet were the steepest part of the climb; from there on the ascent was much more gradual than it had appeared from below. Steve noticed the regular cuttings in the rock on either side of the trail; the Spaniards must have widened this path to Lookout Ledge.
    Halfway up the wall, Flame entered a high natural cleft in the stone. The light grew dim but the sky could be seen overhead. Farther on the chasm narrowed until Steve could touch the walls on either side of Flame. He looked up. There was no opening overhead. Quickly he checked Flame’s walk. Then he saw that the light ahead was as bright as day. Also, the walls had widened. They were in a large shallow cave that opened on Lookout Ledge!
    Steve brought Flame to a stop and slid off his back. He moved cautiously toward the ledge, looking back once to make certain that Flame was not following him. There was only one chance in a thousand that anyone from Antago would be visiting the spit of Azul Island, but he mustn’t take even that one chance of being seen.
    Lookout Ledge was a good deal larger than it appeared from below. It was about fifty feet long and thirty feet wide. Flat on his stomach, Steve crawled across the ledge until he was able to look down three hundred feet below to the floor of Spit Canyon. Beyondwas the sandy, windswept land and the sea. There was no human being in the canyon or on the spit, no boat at sea.
    But grazing on the tufts of grass in the canyon was the small band of horses that lived on the spit. There were eight mares with foals by their sides and a stallion—all small, wiry and shaggy. These were the horses that had brought him to Azul Island last year, for Pitch had written him about this band.
    They were supposed to be descendants of the horses the Conquistadores rode during the Conquest, according to the story which the Chamber of Commerce on Antago released to newspapers in the United States and South America every few years in one form or another. But no one knew whether the story was true. Steve and Pitch, having found Flame and his band in Blue Valley, knew that the story could be closer to the truth than most people on Antago actually believed. On Antago, the “wise” citizens said that the story was just one that had been promoted by the publicity-minded Chamber of Commerce to get the name of Antago in foreign newspapers and possibly build up the island’s tourist trade. These people claimed that actually the horses were from Antago—that many years ago they had been taken to the spit of Azul Island and released to propagate and create the basis for such an interesting and romantic story!
    Steve didn’t know the correct answer any more than anyone else did, although he and Pitch had discussed the small band very often. The horses had none of the characteristics