第87章

...Fer the Lord's sake tell me all about it."Lucy warmed to him because, broken as he was, he could be genuinely glad some horse but his own had won a race.Bostil could never have been like that.So Lucy told him about the race--and then she had to tell about Wildfire, and then about Slone.But at first all of Creech's interest centered round Wildfire and the race that had not really been run.He asked a hundred questions.He was as pleased as a boy listening to a good story.He praised Lucy again and again.He crowed over Bostil's discomfiture.And when Lucy told him that Slone had dared her father to race, had offered to bet Wildfire and his own life against her hand, then Creech was beside himself.

"This hyar Slone--he CALLED Bostil's hand!""He's a wild-horse hunter.And HE can trail us!""Trail us! Slone? Say, Lucy, are you in love with him?"Lucy uttered a strange little broken sound, half laugh, half sob."Love him!

Ah!"

"An' your Dad's ag'in him! Sure Bostil'll hate any rider with a fast hoss.Why didn't the darn fool sell his stallion to your father?""He gave Wildfire to me."

"I'd have done the same.Wal, now, when you git back home what's comin' of it all?"Lucy shook her head sorrowfully."God only knows.Dad will never own Wildfire, and he'll never let me marry Slone.And when you take the King away from him to ransom me--then my life will be hell, for if Dad sacrifices Sage King, afterward he'll hate me as the cause of his loss.""I can sure see the sense of all that," replied Creech, soberly.And he pondered.

Lucy saw through this man as if he had been an inch of crystal water.He was no villain, and just now in his simplicity, in his plodding thought of sympathy for her he was lovable.

"It's one hell of a muss, if you'll excuse my talk," said Creech."An' I don't like the looks of what I 'pear to be throwin' in your way....But see hyar, Lucy, if Bostil didn't give up--or, say, he gits the King back, thet wouldn't make your chance with Slone any brighter.""I don't know."

"Thet race will have to be ran!"

"What good will that do?" cried Lucy, with tears in her eyes."I don't want to lose Dad.I--I--love him--mean as he is.And it'll kill me to lose Lin.

Because Wildfire can beat Sage King, and that means Dad will be forever against him.""Couldn't this wild-horse feller LET the King win thet race?""Oh, he could, but he wouldn't."

"Can't you be sweet round him--fetch him over to thet?""Oh, I could, but I won't."

Creech might have been plotting the happiness of his own daughter, he was so deeply in earnest.

"Wal, mebbe you don't love each other so much, after all....Fast hosses mean much to a man in this hyar country.I know, fer I lost mine!...But they ain't all....I reckon you young folks don't love so much, after all.""But--we--do!" cried Lucy, with a passionate sob.All this talk had unnerved her.

"Then the only way is fer Slone to lie to Bostil.""Lie!" exclaimed Lucy.

"Thet's it.Fetch about a race, somehow--one Bostil can't see-- an' then lie an' say the King run Wildfire off his legs."Suddenly it occurred to Lucy that one significance of this idea of Creech's had not dawned upon him."You forget that soon my father will no longer own Sage King or Sarchedon or Dusty Ben--or any racer.He loses them or me, Ithought.That's what I am here for."

Creech's aspect changed.The eagerness and sympathy fled from his face, leaving it once more hard and stern.He got up and stood a tall, dark, and gloomy man, brooding over his loss, as he watched the canyon.Still, there was in him then a struggle that Lucy felt.Presently he bent over and put his big hand on her head.It seemed gentle and tender compared with former contacts, and it made Lucy thrill.She could not see his face.What did he mean? She divined something startling, and sat there trembling in suspense.

"Bostil won't lose his only girl--or his favorite hoss!...Lucy, I never had no girl.But it seems I'm rememberin' them rides you used to have on my knee when you was little!"Then he strode away toward the forest.Lucy watched him with a full heart, and as she thought of his overcoming the evil in him when her father had yielded to it, she suffered poignant shame.This Creech was not a bad man.He was going to let her go, and he was going to return Bostil's horses when they came.Lucy resolved with a passionate determination that her father must make ample restitution for the loss Creech had endured.She meant to tell Creech so.

Upon his return, however, he seemed so strange and forbidding again that her heart failed her.Had he reconsidered his generous thought? Lucy almost believed so.These old horse-traders were incomprehensible in any relation concerning horses.Recalling Creech's intense interest in Wildfire and in the inevitable race to be run between him and Sage King, Lucy almost believed that Creech would sacrifice his vengeance just to see the red stallion beat the gray.If Creech kept the King in ransom for Lucy he would have to stay deeply hidden in the wild breaks of the canyon country or leave the uplands.For Bostil would never let that deed go unreckoned with.Like Bostil, old Creech was half horse and half human.The human side had warmed to remorse.He had regretted Lucy's plight; he wanted her to be safe at home again and to find happiness; he remembered what she had been to him when she was a little girl.

Creech's other side was more complex.

Before the evening meal ended Lucy divined that Creech was dark and troubled because he had resigned himself to a sacrifice harder than it had seemed in the first flush of noble feeling.But she doubted him no more.She was safe.

The King would be returned.She would compel her father to pay Creech horse for horse.And perhaps the lesson to Bostil would be worth all the pain of effort and distress of mind that it had cost her.

That night as she lay awake listening to the roar of the wind in the pines a strange premonition--like a mysterious voice---came to her with the assurance that Slone was on her trail.