第46章

Two weeks slipped by on the wings of time and opportunity and achievement, all colored so wonderfully for Lucy, all spelling that adventure for which she had yearned.

Lucy was riding down into the sage toward the monuments with a whole day before her.Bostil kept more and more to himself, a circumstance that worried her, though she thought little about it.Van had taken up the training of the King; and Lucy had deliberately quarreled with him so that she would be free to ride where she listed.Farlane nagged her occasionally about her rides into the sage, insisting that she must not go so far and stay so long.And after Van's return to work he made her ride Sarchedon.

Things had happened at the Ford which would have concerned Lucy greatly had she not been over-excited about her own affairs.Some one had ambushed Bostil in the cottonwoods near his house and had shot at him, narrowly missing him.

Bostil had sworn he recognized the shot as having come from a rifle, and that he knew to whom it belonged.The riders did not believe this, and said some boy, shooting at a rabbit or coyote, had been afraid to confess he had nearly hit Bostil.The riders all said Bostil was not wholly himself of late.The river was still low.The boat had not been repaired.And Creech's horses were still on the other side.

These things concerned Lucy, yet they only came and went swiftly through her mind.She was obsessed by things intimately concerning herself.

"Oh, I oughtn't to go," she said, aloud.But she did not even check Sarchedon's long swing, his rocking-chair lope.She had said a hundred times that she ought not go again out to the monuments.For Lin Slone had fallen despairingly, terribly in love with her.

It was not this, she averred, but the monuments and the beautiful Wildfire that had woven a spell round her she could not break.She had ridden Wildfire all through that strange region of monuments and now they claimed something of her.Just as wonderful was Wildfire's love for her.The great stallion hated Slone and loved Lucy.Of all the remarkable circumstances she had seen or heard about a horse, this fact was the most striking.She could do anything with him.All that savageness and wildness disappeared when she approached him.He came at her call.He whistled at sight of her.He sent out a ringing blast of disapproval when she rode away.Every day he tried to bite or kick Slone, but he was meek under Lucy's touch.

But this morning there came to Lucy the first vague doubt of herself.Once entering her mind, that doubt became clear.And then she vowed she liked Slone as she might a brother.And something within her accused her own conviction.

The conviction was her real self, and the accusation was some other girl lately born in her.Lucy did not like this new person.She was afraid of her.

She would not think of her unless she had to.

"I never cared for him--that way," she said, aloud."I don't--Icouldn't--ever--I--I--love Lin Slone!"

The spoken thought--the sound of the words played havoc with Lucy's self-conscious calmness.She burned.She trembled.She was in a rage with herself.She spurred Sarchedon into a run and tore through the sage, down into the valley, running him harder than she should have run him.Then she checked him, and, penitent, petted him out of all proportion to her thoughtlessness.

The violent exercise only heated her blood and, if anything, increased this sudden and new torment.Why had she discarded her boy's rider outfit and chaps for a riding-habit made by her aunt, and one she had scorned to wear? Some awful, accusing voice thundered in Lucy's burning ears that she had done this because she was ashamed to face Lin Slone any more in that costume--she wanted to appear different in his eyes, to look like a girl.If that shameful suspicion was a fact why was it---what did it mean? She could not tell, yet she was afraid of the truth.

All of a sudden Lin Slone stood out clearer in her mental vision-- the finest type of a rider she had ever known--a strong, lithe, magnificent horseman, whose gentleness showed his love for horses, whose roughness showed his power--a strange, intense, lonely man in whom she had brought out pride, gratitude, kindness, passion, and despair.She felt her heart swell at the realization that she had changed him, made him kinder, made him divide his love as did her father, made him human, hopeful, longing for a future unfettered by the toils of desert allurement.She could not control her pride.

She must like him very much.She confessed that, honestly, without a qualm.It was only bewildering moments of strange agitation and uncertainty that bothered her.She had refused to be concerned by them until they had finally impinged upon her peace of mind.Then they accused her; now she accused herself.She ought not go to meet Lin Slone any more.

"But then--the race!" she murmured."I couldn't give that up....And oh!

I'm afraid the harm is done! What can I do?"After the race--what then? To be sure, all of Bostil's Ford would know she had been meeting Slone out in the sage, training his horse.What would people say?

"Dad will simply be radiant, IF he can buy Wildfire--and a fiend if he can't,"she muttered.

Lucy saw that her own impulsiveness had amounted to daring.She had gone too far.She excused that--for she had a rider's blood--she was Bostil's girl.But she had, in her wildness and joy and spirit, spent many hours alone with a rider, to his undoing.She could not excuse that.She was ashamed.What would he say when she told him she could see him no more? The thought made her weak.

He would accept and go his way--back to that lonely desert, with only a horse.

"Wildfire doesn't love him!" she said.