第38章

Lucy went closer to the stallion so that she could almost touch him.He saw her.He was nearly choked.Foam and blood wheezed out with his heaves.She must do something quickly.And in her haste she pricked her arms and shoulders on the cactus.

She led the black horse closer in, letting the ropes go, slack.The black seemed as glad of that release as she was.What a faithful brute he looked!

Lucy liked his eyes.

Then she edged down in among the cactus and brush.The red horse no longer lay in a strained position.He could lift his head.Lucy saw that the noose still held tight round his neck.Fearlessly she jerked it loose.Then she backed away, but not quite out of his reach.He coughed and breathed slowly, with great heaves.Then he snorted.

"You're all right now," said Lucy, soothingly.Slowly she reached a hand toward his head.He drew it back as far as he could.She stepped around, closer, and more back of him, and put a hand on him, gently, for an instant.

Then she slipped out of the brush and, untying one lasso from the pommel, she returned to the horse and pulled it from round his legs.He was free now, except the hackamore, and that rope was slack.Lucy stood near him, watching him, talking to him, waiting for him to get up.She could not be sure he was not badly hurt till he stood up.At first he made no efforts to rise.He watched Lucy, less fearfully, she imagined.And she never made a move.She wanted him to see, to understand that she had not hurt him and would not hurt him.It began to dawn upon her that he was magnificent.

Finally, with a long, slow heave he got to his feet.Lucy led him out of the hole to open ground.She seemed somehow confident.There occurred to her only one way to act.

"A little horse sense, as Dad would say," she soliloquized, and then, when she got him out of the brush, she stood thrilled and amazed.

"Oh, what a wild, beautiful horse! What a giant! He's bigger than the King.

Oh, if Dad could see him!"

The red stallion did not appear to be hurt.The twitching of his muscles must have been caused by the cactus spikes embedded in him.There were drops of blood all over one side.Lucy thought she dared to try to pull these thorns out.She had never in her life been afraid of any horse.Farlane, Holley, all the riders, and her father, too, had tried to make her realize the danger in a horse, sooner or later.But Lucy could not help it; she was not afraid; she believed that the meanest horse was actuated by natural fear of a man; she was not a man and she had never handled a horse like a man.This red stallion showed hate of the black horse and the rope that connected them; he showed some spirit at the repeated blasts of Sage King.But he showed less fear of her.

"He has been a proud, wild stallion," mused Lucy."And he's now broken--terribly broken--all but ruined."Then she walked up to him naturally and spoke softly, and reached a hand for his shoulder.

"Whoa, Reddy.Whoa now....There.That's a good fellow.Why, I wouldn't rope you or hit you.I'm only a girl."He drew up, made a single effort to jump, which she prevented, and then he stood quivering, eying her, while she talked soothingly, and patted him and looked at him in the way she had found infallible with most horses.Lucy believed horses were like people, or easier to get along with.Presently she gently pulled out one of the cactus spikes.The horse flinched, but he stood.

Lucy was slow, careful, patient, and dexterous.The cactus needles were loose and easily removed or brushed off.At length she got him free of them, and was almost as proud as she was glad.The horse had gradually dropped his head; he was tired and his spirit was broken.

"Now, what shall I do?" she queried."I'll take the back trail of these horses.They certainly hadn't been here long before I saw them.And the rider may be close.If not I'll take the horses home."She slipped the noose from the stallion's head, leaving the hackamore, and, coiling the loose lasso, she hung it over the pommel of the black's saddle.

Then she took up his bridle.

"Come on," she called.

The black followed her, and the stallion, still fast to him by the lasso Lucy had left tied, trooped behind with bowed head.Lucy was elated.But Sage King did not like the matter at all.Lucy had to drop the black's bridle and catch the King, and then ride back to lead the other again.

A broad trail marked the way the two horses had come, and it led off to the left, toward where the monuments were thickest, and where the great sections of wall stood, broken and battlemented.Lucy was hard put to it to hold Sage King, but the horses behind plodded along.The black horse struck Lucy as being an ugly, but a faithful and wonderful animal.He understood everything.

Presently she tied the bridle she was leading him by to the end of her own lasso, and thus let him drop back a few yards, which lessened the King's fretting.

Intent on the trail, Lucy failed to note time or distance till the looming and frowning monuments stood aloft before her.What weird effect they had! Each might have been a colossal statue left there to mark the work of the ages.

Lucy realized that the whole vast valley had once been solid rock, just like the monuments, and through the millions of years the softer parts had eroded and weathered and blown away--gone with the great sea that had once been there.But the beauty, the solemnity, the majesty of these monuments fascinated her most.She passed the first one, a huge square butte, and then the second, a ragged, thin, double shaft, and then went between two much alike, reaching skyward in the shape of monstrous mittens.She watched and watched them, sparing a moment now and then to attend to the trail.She noticed that she was coming into a region of grass, and faint signs of water in the draws.She was getting high again, not many miles now from the wall of rock.

All at once Sage King shied, and Lucy looked down to see a man lying on the ground.He lay inert.But his eyes were open--dark, staring eyes.They moved.

And he called.But Lucy could not understand him.