Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
That was great, Bostil knew, and enough to win over any horse in the uplands, providing the luck of the race fell even. Luck, however, was a fickle thing. "I was advisin' Dad to swim the hosses over," declared Joel, deliberately. "A-huh! You was? ... An' why?" rejoined Bostil. Joel's simplicity and frankness vanished, and with them his rationality. He looked queer.
Bostil had rubbed him the wrong way. "You're a lair!" declared Bostil, with a tremendous stride forward. Slone saw then how dangerous the man really was. "It was no race. Your wild hoss knocked the King off the track." "Sage King had the lead, didn't he? Why didn't he keep it?"
And Bostil recorded in his mind that which he would never forget a wild stallion, with unbroken spirit; a giant of a horse, glistening red, with mane like dark-striped, wind-blown flame, all muscle, all grace, all power; a neck long and slender and arching to the small, savagely beautiful head; the jaws open, and the thin-skinned, pink-colored nostrils that proved the Arabian blood; the slanting shoulders and the deep, broad chest, the powerful legs and knees not too high nor too low, the symmetrical dark hoofs that rang on the little stones all these marks so significant of speed and endurance.
It brought his head up with a jerk, his glance steady and keen on Bostil's. "Bostil, you know I don't drink," he said. "A-huh! I know a lot about you, Slone.... I heard you bought Vorhees's place, up on the bench." "Yes." "Did he tell you it was mortgaged to me for more'n it's worth?" "No, he didn't." "Did he make over any papers to you?" "No."
"Wal, I'm glad to hear it," said Bostil, gruffly. "Brack, how many hosses entered now for the big race?" The lean, gray Brackton bent earnestly over his soiled ledger, while the riders and horsemen round him grew silent to listen. "Thar's the Sage King by Bostil," replied Brackton.
His rider's eye, keen once more, caught a gleam of gold above the red, and that gold was Lucy's hair. Bostil forgot the King. Then Holley bawled into his ear, "They're half-way!" The race was beautiful. Bostil strained his eyes. He gloried in what he saw Lucy low over the neck of that red stallion. He could see plainer now. They were coming closer. How swiftly! What a splendid race!
I want a look at the King." Bostil went into the village. All day long he was so busy with a thousand and one things referred to him, put on him, undertaken by him, that he had no time to think. Back in his mind, however, there was a burden of which he was vaguely conscious all the time. He worked late into the night and slept late the next morning.
Slone's position, the impotence of it, rendered him less able to control his temper. "Why can't we?" demanded Bostil. "If you wasn't so touchy we could. An' let me say, young feller, thet there's more reason now thet you DO make a deal with me." "Deal? What about?" "About your red hoss." "Wildfire! ... No deals, Bostil," returned Slone, and made as if to pass him.
"He smells of smoke," put in Farlane, who had knelt at the black's legs. "He's been runnin' fire. See thet! Fetlocks all singed!" All the riders looked, and then with grave, questioning eyes at one another. "Reckon thar's been hell!" muttered Holley, darkly. Some of the riders led the horses away toward the corrals. Bostil wheeled to face the north again.
Bostil followed Brackton, and Slone came along. The old man opened a door into a small room, half full of stores and track. The lantern only dimly lighted the place. "Look thar!" And Brackton flashed the light upon a man lying prostrate. Bostil recognized the pale face of Joel Creech. "Brack! ... What's this? Is he dead?" Bostil sustained a strange, incomprehensible shock.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking