Lucy Bostil had called twice to her father and he had not answered. He
was out at the hitching-rail, with Holley, the rider, and two other
men. If he heard Lucy he gave no sign of it. She had on her chaps and
did not care to go any farther than the door where she stood.
"Somers has gone to Durango an' Shugrue is out huntin' hosses," Lucy
heard Bostil say, gruffly.
"Wal now, I reckon I could handle the boat an' fetch Creech's hosses
over," said Holley.
Bostil raised an impatient hand, as if to wave aside Holley's
assumption.
Then one of the other two men spoke up. Lucy had seen him before, but
did not know his name.
"Sure there ain't any need to rustle the job. The river hain't showed
any signs of risin' yet. But Creech is worryin'. He allus is worryin'
over them hosses. No wonder! Thet Blue Roan is sure a hoss. Yesterday
at two miles he showed Creech he was a sight faster than last year. The
grass is gone over there. Creech is grainin' his stock these last few
days. An' thet's expensive."
"How about the flat up the canyon?" queried Bostil. "Ain't there any
grass there?"
"Reckon not. It's the dryest spell Creech ever had," replied the other.
"An' if there was grass it wouldn't do him no good. A landslide blocked
the only trail up."
"Bostil, them hosses, the racers special, ought to be brought acrost
the river," said Holley, earnestly. He loved horses and was thinking of
them.
"The boat's got to be patched up," replied Bostil, shortly.
It occurred to Lucy that her father was also thinking of Creech's
thoroughbreds, but not like Holley. She grew grave and listened
intently.
There was an awkward pause. Creech's rider, whoever he was, evidently
tried to conceal his anxiety. He flicked his boots with a quirt. The
boots were covered with wet mud. Probably he had crossed the river very
recently.
"Wal, when will you have the hosses fetched over?" he asked,
deliberately. "Creech'll want to know."
"Just as soon as the boat's mended," replied Bostil. "I'll put Shugrue
on the job to-morrow."
"Thanks, Bostil. Sure, thet'll be all right. Creech'll be satisfied,"
said the rider, as if relieved. Then he mounted, and with his companion
trotted down the lane.
The lean, gray Holley bent a keen gaze upon Bostil. But Bostil did not
notice that; he appeared preoccupied in thought.
"Bostil, the dry winter an' spring here ain't any guarantee thet there
wasn't a lot of snow up in the mountains." Holley's remark startled
Bostil.
"No--it ain't--sure," he replied.
"An' any mornin' along now we might wake up to hear the Colorado
boomin'," went on Holley, significantly.
Bostil did not reply to that.
"Creech hain't lived over there so many years. What's he know about the
river? An' fer that matter, who knows anythin' sure about thet
hell-bent river?"
"It ain't my business thet Creech lives over there riskin' his stock
every spring," replied Bostil, darkly.
Holley opened his lips to speak, hesitated, looked away from Bostil,
and finally said, "No, it sure ain't." Then he turned and walked away,
head bent in sober thought. Bostil came toward the open door where Lucy
stood. He looked somber. At her greeting he seemed startled.
"What?" he said.
"I just said, 'Hello, Dad,'" she replied, demurely. Yet she
thoughtfully studied her father's dark face.
"Hello yourself.... Did you know Van got throwed an' hurt?"
"Yes."
Bostil swore under his breath. "There ain't any riders on the range
thet can be trusted," he said, disgustedly. "They're all the same. They
like to get in a bunch an' jeer each other an' bet. They want MEAN
hosses. They make good hosses buck. They haven't any use for a hoss
thet won't buck. They all want to give a hoss a rakin' over.... Think
of thet fool Van gettin' throwed by a two-dollar Ute mustang. An' hurt
so he can't ride for days! With them races comin' soon! It makes me
sick."
"Dad, weren't you a rider once?" asked Lucy.
"I never was thet kind."
"Van will be all right in a few days."
"No matter. It's bad business. If I had any other rider who could
handle the King I'd let Van go."
"I can get just as much out of the King as Van can," said Lucy,
spiritedly.
"You!" exclaimed Bostil. But there was pride in his glance.
"I know I can."
"You never had any use for Sage King," said Bostil, as if he had been
wronged.
"I love the King a little, and hate him a lot," laughed Lucy.
"Wal, I might let you ride at thet, if Van ain't in shape," rejoined
her father.
"I wouldn't ride him in the race. But I'll keep him in fine fettle."
"I'll bet you'd like to see Sarch beat him," said Bostil, jealously.
"Sure I would," replied Lucy, teasingly. "But, Dad, I'm afraid Sarch
never will beat him."
Bostil grunted. "See here. I don't want any weight up on the King. You
take him out for a few days. An' ride him! Savvy thet?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Give him miles an' miles--an' then comin' home, on good trails, ride
him for all your worth.... Now, Lucy, keep your eye open. Don't let any
one get near you on the sage."
"I won't.... Dad, do you still worry about poor Joel Creech?"
"Not Joel. But I'd rather lose all my stock then have Cordts or Dick
Sears get within a mile of you."
"A mile!" exclaimed Lucy, lightly, though a fleeting shade crossed her
face. "Why, I'd run away from him, if I was on the King, even if he got
within ten yards of me."
"A mile is close enough, my daughter," replied Bostil. "Don't ever
forget to keep your eye open. Cordts has sworn thet if he can't steal
the King he'll get you."
"Oh! he prefers the horse to me."
"Wal, Lucy, I've a sneakin' idea thet Cordts will never leave the
uplands unless he gets you an' the King both."
"And, Dad--you consented to let that horse-thief come to our races?"
exclaimed Lucy, with heat.
"Why not? He can't do any harm. If he or his men get uppish, the worse
for them. Cordts gave his word not to turn a trick till after the
races."
"Do you trust him?"
"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.
So she kept on, now and then gazing at the smoke. As she grew nearer to
the first monument she was surprised, then amazed, at its height and
surpassing size. It was mountain-high--a grand tower--smooth, worn,
glistening, yellow and red. The trail she had followed petered out in a
deep wash, and beyond that she crossed no more trails. The sage had
grown meager and the greasewoods stunted and dead; and cacti appeared
on barren places. The grass had not failed, but it was not rich grass
such as the horses and cattle grazed upon miles back on the slope. The
air was hot down here. The breeze was heavy and smelled of fire, and
the sand was blowing here and there. She had a sense of the bigness,
the openness of this valley, and then she realized its wildness and
strangeness. These lonely, isolated monuments made the place different
from any she had visited. They did not seem mere standing rocks. They
seemed to retreat all the time as she approached, and they watched her.
They interested her, made her curious. What had formed all these
strange monuments? Here the ground was level for miles and miles, to
slope gently up to the bases of these huge rocks. In an old book she
had seen pictures of the Egyptian pyramids, but these appeared vaster,
higher, and stranger, and they were sheerly perpendicular.
Suddenly Sage King halted sharply, shot up his ears, and whistled. Lucy
was startled. That from the King meant something. Hastily, with keen
glance she swept the foreground. A mile on, near the monument, was a
small black spot. It seemed motionless. But the King's whistle had
proved it to be a horse. When Lucy had covered a quarter of the
intervening distance she could distinguish the horse and that there
appeared some thing strange about his position. Lucy urged Sage King
into a lope and soon drew nearer. The black horse had his head down,
yet he did not appear to be grazing. He was as still as a statue. He
stood just outside a clump of greasewood and cactus.
Suddenly a sound pierced the stillness. The King jumped and snorted in
fright. For an instant Lucy's blood ran cold, for it was a horrible
cry. Then she recognized it as the neigh of a horse in agony. She had
heard crippled and dying horses utter that long-drawn and
blood-curdling neigh. The black horse had not moved, so the sound could
not have come from him. Lucy thought Sage King acted more excited than
the occasion called for. Then remembering her father's warning, she
reined in on top of a little knoll, perhaps a hundred yards from where
the black horse stood, and she bent her keen gaze forward.
It was a huge, gaunt, shaggy black horse she saw, with the saddle
farther up on his shoulders than it should have been. He stood
motionless, as if utterly exhausted. His forelegs were braced, so that
he leaned slightly back. Then Lucy saw a rope. It was fast to the
saddle and stretched down into the cactus. There was no other horse in
sight, nor any living thing. The immense monument dominated the scene.
It seemed stupendous to Lucy, sublime, almost frightful.
She hesitated. She knew there was another horse, very likely at the
other end of that lasso. Probably a rider had been thrown, perhaps
killed. Certainly a horse had been hurt. Then on the moment rang out
the same neigh of agony, only weaker and shorter. Lucy no longer feared
an ambush. That was a cry which could not be imitated by a man or
forced from a horse. There was probably death, certainly suffering,
near at hand. She spurred the King on.
There was a little slope to descend, a wash to cross, a bench to
climb--and then she rode up to the black horse. Sage King needed harder
treatment than Lucy had ever given him.
"What's wrong with you?" she demanded, pulling him down. Suddenly, as
she felt him tremble, she realized that he was frightened. "That's
funny!" Then when she got him quiet she looked around.
The black horse was indeed huge. His mane, his shaggy flanks, were
lathered as if he had been smeared with heavy soap-suds. He raised his
head to look at her. Lucy, accustomed to horses all her life, saw that
this one welcomed her arrival. But he was almost ready to drop.
Two taut lassoes stretched from the pommel of his saddle down a little
into a depression full of brush and cactus and rocks. Then Lucy saw a
red horse. He was down in a bad position. She heard his low, choking
heaves. Probably he had broken legs or back. She could not bear to see
a horse in pain. She would do what was possible, even to the extent of
putting him out of his misery, if nothing else could be done. Yet she
scanned the surroundings closely, and peered into the bushes and behind
the rocks before she tried to urge Sage King closer. He refused to go
nearer, and Lucy dismounted.
The red horse was partly hidden by overbending brush. He had plunged
into a hole full of cactus. There was a hackamore round his nose and a
tight noose round his neck. The one round his neck was also round his
forelegs. And both lassoes were held taut by the black horse. A torn
and soiled rider's scarf hung limp round the red horse's nose, kept
from falling off by the hackamore.
"A wild horse, a stallion, being broken!" exclaimed Lucy, instantly
grasping the situation. "Oh! where's the rider?"
She gazed around, ran to and fro, glanced down the little slope, and
beyond, but she did not see anything resembling the form of a man. Then
she ran back.
Lucy took another quick look at the red stallion. She did not believe
either his legs or back were hurt. He was just played out and tangled
and tied in the ropes, and could not get up. The shaggy black horse
stood there braced and indomitable. But he, likewise, was almost ready
to drop. Looking at the condition of both horses and the saddle and
ropes, Lucy saw what a fight there had been, and a race! Where was the
rider? Thrown, surely, and back on the trail, perhaps dead or maimed.
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.
In a flash she leaped off the King. She ran to the prostrate
man--dropped to her knees.
"Oh!" she cried. His face was ghastly. "Oh! are you--you badly hurt?"
"Lift me--my head," he said, faintly.
She raised his head. What a strained, passionate, terrible gaze he bent
upon the horses.
"Boy, they're mine--the black an' the red!" he cried.
"They surely must be," replied Lucy. "Oh! tell me. Are you hurt?"
"Boy! did you catch them--fetch them back--lookin' for me?"
"I sure did."
"You caught-that red devil--an' fetched him--back to me?" went on the
wondering, faint voice. "Boy--oh--boy!"
He lifted a long, ragged arm and pulled Lucy down. The action amazed
her equally as his passion of gratitude. He might have been injured,
but he had an arm of iron. Lucy was powerless. She felt her face
against his--and her breast against his. The pounding of his heart was
like blows. The first instant she wanted to laugh, despite her pity.
Then the powerful arm--the contact affected her as nothing ever before.
Suppose this crippled rider had taken her for a boy--She was not a boy!
She could not help being herself. And no man had ever put a hand on
her. Consciousness of this brought shame and anger. She struggled so
violently that she freed herself. And he lay back.
"See here--that's no way to act--to hug--a person," she cried, with
flaming cheeks.
"Boy, I--"
"I'm NOT a boy. I'm a girl."
"What!"
Lucy tore off her sombrero, which had been pulled far forward, and this
revealed her face fully, and her hair came tumbling down. The rider
gazed, stupefied. Then a faint tinge of red colored his ghastly cheeks.
"A girl! ... Why--why 'scuse me, miss. I--I took you--for a boy."
He seemed so astounded, he looked so ashamed, so scared, and withal, so
haggard and weak, that Lucy immediately recovered her equanimity.
"Sure I'm a girl. But that's no matter.... You've been thrown. Are you
hurt?"
He smiled a weak assent.
"Badly?" she queried. She did not like the way he lay--so limp, so
motionless.
"I'm afraid so. I can't move."
"Oh! ... What shall I do?"
"Can you--get me water?" he whispered, with dry lips.
Lucy flew to her horse to get the small canteen she always carried. But
that had been left on her saddle, and she had ridden Van's. Then she
gazed around. The wash she had crossed several times ran near where the
rider lay. Green grass and willows bordered it. She ran down and,
hurrying along, searched for water. There was water in places, yet she
had to go a long way before she found water that was drinkable. Filling
her sombrero, she hurried back to the side of the rider. It was
difficult to give him a drink.
"Thanks, miss," he said, gratefully. His voice was stronger and less
hoarse.
"Have you any broken bones?" asked Lucy.
"I don't know. I can't feel much."
"Are you in pain?"
"Hardly. I feel sort of thick."
Lucy, being an intelligent girl, born in the desert and used to its
needs, had not often encountered a situation with which she was unable
to cope.
"Let me feel if you have any broken bones.... THAT arm isn't broken,
I'm positive."
The rider smiled faintly again. How he stared with his strained, dark
eyes! His face showed ghastly through the thin, soft beard and the tan.
Lucy found his right arm badly bruised, but not broken. She made sure
his collar-bones and shoulder-blades were intact. Broken ribs were
harder to locate; still, as he did not feel pain from pressure, she
concluded there were no fractures there. With her assistance he moved
his legs, proving no broken bones there.
"I'm afraid it's my--spine," he said.
"But you raised your head once," she replied. "If your back was--was
broken or injured you couldn't raise your head."
"So I couldn't. I guess I'm just knocked out. I was--pretty weak before
Wildfire knocked me--off Nagger."
"Wildfire?"
"That's the red stallion's name."
"Oh, he's named already?"
"I named him--long ago. He's known on many a range."
"Where?"
"I think far north of here. I--trailed him--days--weeks--months. We
crossed the great canyon--"
"The Grand Canyon?"
"It must be that."
"The Grand Canyon is down there," said Lucy, pointing. "I live on
it.... You've come a long way."
"Hundreds of miles! ... Oh, the ground I covered that awful canyon
country! ... But I stayed with Wildfire. An' I put a rope on him. An'
he got away.... An' it was a boy--no--a GIRL who--saved him for me--an'
maybe saved my life, too!"
Lucy looked away from the dark, staring eyes. A light in them confused
her.
"Never mind me. You say you were weak? Have you been ill?"
"No, miss, just starved.... I starved on Wildfire's trail."
Lucy ran to her saddle and got the biscuits out of the pockets of her
coat, and she ran back to the rider.
"Here. I never thought. Oh, you've had a hard time of it! I understand.
That wonderful flame of a horse! I'd have stayed, too. My father was a
rider once. Bostil. Did you ever hear of him?"
"Bostil. The name--I've heard." Then the rider lay thinking, as he
munched a biscuit. "Yes, I remember, but it was long ago. I spent a
night with a wagon-train, a camp of many men and women, religious
people, working into Utah. Bostil had a boat at the crossing of the
Fathers."
"Yes, they called the Ferry that."
"I remember well now. They said Bostil couldn't count his horses--that
he was a rich man, hard on riders--an' he'd used a gun more than once."
Lucy bowed her head. "Yes, that's my dad."
The rider did not seem to see how he had hurt her.
"Here we are talking--wasting time," she said. "I must start home. You
can't be moved. What shall I do?"
"That's for you to say, Bostil's daughter."
"My name's Lucy," replied the girl, blushing painfully, "I mean I'll be
glad to do anything you think best."
"You're very good."
Then he turned his face away. Lucy looked closely at him. He was indeed
a beggared rider. His clothes and his boots hung in tatters. He had no
hat, no coat, no vest. His gaunt face bore traces of what might have
been a fine, strong comeliness, but now it was only thin, worn, wan,
pitiful, with that look which always went to a woman's heart. He had
the look of a homeless rider. Lucy had seen a few of his wandering
type, and his story was so plain. But he seemed to have a touch of
pride, and this quickened her interest.
"Then I'll do what I think best for you," said Lucy.
First she unsaddled the black Nagger. With the saddle she made a pillow
for the rider's head, and she covered him with the saddle blanket.
Before she had finished this task he turned his eyes upon her. And Lucy
felt she would be haunted. Was he badly hurt, after all? It seemed
probable. How strange he was!
"I'll water the horses--then tie Wildfire here on a double rope.
There's grass."
"But you can't lead him," replied the rider.
"He'll follow me."
"That red devil!" The rider shuddered as he spoke.
Lucy had some faint inkling of what a terrible fight that had been
between man and horse. "Yes; when I found him he was broken. Look at
him now."
But the rider did not appear to want to see the stallion. He gazed up
at Lucy, and she saw something in his eyes that made her think of a
child. She left him, had no trouble in watering the horses, and
haltered Wildfire among the willows on a patch of grass. Then she
returned.
"I'll go now," she said to the rider.
"Where?"
"Home. I'll come back to-morrow, early, and bring some one to help
you--"
"Girl, if YOU want to help me more--bring me some bread an' meat. Don't
tell any one. Look what a ragamuffin I am.... An' there's Wildfire. I
don't want him seen till I'm--on my feet again. I know riders....
That's all. If you want to be so good--come."
"I'll come," replied Lucy, simply.
"Thank you. I owe you--a lot.... What did you say your name was?"
"Lucy--Lucy Bostil."
"Oh, I forgot.... Are you sure you tied Wildfire good an' tight?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I'll go now. I hope you'll be better to-morrow."
Lucy hesitated, with her hand on the King's bridle. She did not like to
leave this young man lying there helpless on the desert. But what else
could she do? What a strange adventure had befallen her! At the
following thought that it was not yet concluded she felt a little stir
of excitement at her pulses. She was so strangely preoccupied that she
forgot it was necessary for her to have a step to mount Sage King. She
realized it quickly enough when she attempted it. Then she led him off
in the sage till she found a rock. Mounting, she turned him straight
across country, meaning to cut out miles of travel that would have been
necessary along her back-trail. Once she looked back. The rider was not
visible; the black horse, Nagger, was out of sight, but Wildfire,
blazing in the sun, watched her depart.