第36章

"Yes.But his men might break loose, away from his sight.Especially thet Dick Sears.He's a bad man.So be watchful whenever you ride out."As Lucy went down toward the corrals she was thinking deeply.She could always tell, woman-like.when her father was excited or agitated.She remembered the conversation between him and Creech's rider.She remembered the keen glance old Holley had bent upon him.And mostly she remembered the somber look upon his face.She did not like that.Once, when a little girl, she had seen it and never forgotten it, nor the thing that it was associated with--something tragical which had happened in the big room.There had been loud, angry voices of men--and shots--and then the men carried out a long form covered with a blanket.She loved her father, but there was a side to him she feared.And somehow related to that side was his hardness toward Creech and his intolerance of any rider owning a fast horse and his obsession in regard to his own racers.Lucy had often tantalized her father with the joke that if it ever came to a choice between her and his favorites they would come first.But was it any longer a joke? Lucy felt that she had left childhood behind with its fun and fancies, and she had begun to look at life thoughtfully.

Sight of the corrals, however, and of the King prancing around, drove serious thoughts away.There were riders there, among them Farlane, and they all had pleasant greetings for her.

"Farlane, Dad says I'm to take out Sage King," announced Lucy.

"No!" ejaculated Farlane, as he pocketed his pipe.

"Sure.And I'm to RIDE him.You know how Dad means that.""Wal, now, I'm doggoned!" added Farlane, looking worried and pleased at once.

"I reckon, Miss Lucy, you--you wouldn't fool me?""Why, Farlane!" returned Lucy, reproachfully."Did I ever do a single thing around horses that you didn't want me to?"Farlane rubbed his chin beard somewhat dubiously."Wal, Miss Lucy, not exactly while you was around the hosses.But I reckon when you onct got up, you've sorta forgot a few times."All the riders laughed, and Lucy joined them.

"I'm safe when I'm up, you know that," she replied.

They brought out the gray, and after the manner of riders who had the care of a great horse and loved him, they curried and combed and rubbed him before saddling him.

"Reckon you'd better ride Van's saddle," suggested Farlane."Them races is close now, an' a strange saddle--""Of course.Don't change anything he's used to, except the stirrups," replied Lucy.

Despite her antipathy toward Sage King, Lucy could not gaze at him without all a rider's glory in a horse.He was sleek, so graceful, so racy, so near the soft gray of the sage, so beautiful in build and action.Then he was the kind of a horse that did not have to be eternally watched.He was spirited and full of life, eager to run, but when Farlane called for him to stand still he obeyed.He was the kind of a horse that a child could have played around in safety.He never kicked.He never bit.He never bolted.It was splendid to see him with Farlane or with Bostil.He did not like Lucy very well, a fact that perhaps accounted for Lucy's antipathy.For that matter, he did not like any woman.If he had a bad trait, it came out when Van rode him, but all the riders, and Bostil, too, claimed that Van was to blame for that.

"Thar, I reckon them stirrups is right," declared Farlane."Now, Miss Lucy, hold him tight till he wears off thet edge.He needs work."Sage King would not kneel for Lucy as Sarchedon did, and he was too high for her to mount from the ground, so she mounted from a rock.She took to the road, and then the first trail into the sage, intending to trot him ten or fifteen miles down into the valley, and give him some fast, warm work on the return.

The day was early in May and promised to grow hot.There was not a cloud in the blue sky.The wind, laden with the breath of sage, blew briskly from the west.All before Lucy lay the vast valley, gray and dusky gray, then blue, then purple where the monuments stood, and, farther still, dark ramparts of rock.Lucy had a habit of dreaming while on horseback, a habit all the riders had tried to break, but she did not give it rein while she rode Sarchedon, and assuredly now, up on the King, she never forgot him for an instant.He shied at mockingbirds and pack-rats and blowing blossoms and even at butterflies;and he did it, Lucy thought, just because he was full of mischief.Sage King had been known to go steady when there had been reason to shy.He did not like Lucy and he chose to torment her.Finally he earned a good dig from a spur, and then, with swift pounding of hoofs, he plunged and veered and danced in the sage.Lucy kept her temper, which was what most riders did not do, and by patience and firmness pulled Sage King out of his prancing back into the trail.He was not the least cross-grained, and, having had his little spurt, he settled down into easy going.

In an hour Lucy was ten miles or more from home, and farther down in the valley than she had ever been.In fact, she had never before been down the long slope to the valley floor.How changed the horizon became! The monuments loomed up now, dark, sentinel-like, and strange.The first one, a great red rock, seemed to her some five miles away.It was lofty, straight-sided, with a green slope at its base.And beyond that the other monuments stretched out down the valley.Lucy decided to ride as far as the first one before turning back.Always these monuments had fascinated her, and this was her opportunity to ride near one.How lofty they were, how wonderfully colored, and how comely!

Presently, over the left, where the monuments were thicker, and gradually merged their slopes and lines and bulk into the yellow walls, she saw low, drifting clouds of smoke.

"Well, what's that, I wonder?" she mused.To see smoke on the horizon in that direction was unusual, though out toward Durango the grassy benches would often burn over.And these low clouds of smoke resembled those she had seen before.

"It's a long way off," she added.