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Updated: May 31, 2025
Again that wild, gay scream pealed out call or laugh or challenge. Sage King, with a fleetness that made the eyes of Bostil and his riders glisten, took the lead, and then sheered off to slow down, while Buckles thundered past. Lucy was pulling him hard, and had him plunging to a halt, when the rider Holley ran out to grasp his bridle. Buckles was snorting and his ears were laid back.
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.
"If she meets him again I'll rope her in the house," declared Bostil. Another clear-eyed rider drew Bostil's attention from the gray waste of rolling sage. "Bostil, look! Look at the King! He's watchin' fer somethin'.... An' so's Sarch." The two horses named were facing a ridge some few hundred yards distant, and their heads were aloft and ears straight forward.
Auntie said I'm now a grown-up girl.... Oh, she carried on! ... Bostil would likely shoot you. And if he didn't some of the riders would.... Oh, Lin, it was perfectly ridiculous the way Auntie talked." "I reckon not," replied Slone. "I'm afraid I've done wrong to let you come out here.... But I never thought. I'm not used to girls. I'll I'll deserve what I get for lettin' you came."
"CORDTS!" Bostil leaned forward in sudden, fierce eagerness. "Yes, Cordts.... His outfit run across Creech's trail an' we bunched. I can't tell now.... But we had hell! An' Cordts is dead so's Hutch an' that other pard of his.... Bostil, they'll never haunt your sleep again!" Slone finished with a strange sternness that seemed almost bitter. Bostil raised both his huge fists.
The flush, the darkness of her eyes, the added something in her face, tender, thoughtful, strong these were new. Bostil pondered while she welcomed his guests. Slone, who had hung back, was last in turn. Lucy greeted him as she had the others. Slone met her with awkward constraint. The gray had not left his face. Lucy looked up at him again, and differently. "What what has happened?" she asked.
"See hyar, Bostil," spoke up old Cal Blinn, "you jest wait till I git an eye on the King's runnin'. Mebbe I'll go you even money." "An' as fer me, Bostil," said Colson, "I ain't set up yit which hoss I'll race." Burthwait, an old rider, came forward to Brackton's desk and entered a wager against the field that made all the men gasp.
Bostil put her down and led her through the lines of admiring Indians and applauding riders, and left her with the women. When he turned again he was in time to see the strange rider mount Wildfire. It was a swift and hazardous mount, the stallion being in the air.
"Mebbe Slone got out because of somethin' thet come off last night.... Now, Joel Creech an' an' " Bostil waited to hear no more. What did he care about the idiot Creech? He strode down the lane to the corrals. Farlane, Van, and other riders were there, leisurely as usual. Then Holley appeared, coming out of the barn. He, too, was easy, cool, natural, lazy. None of these riders knew what was amiss.
The heavy roar of the gale overhead struck Lucy with new and torturing dread. Sage King once in his life was running away, bridleless, and behind him there was fire on the wings of the wind. For the first time in his experience Bostil found that horse-trading palled upon him. This trip to Durango was a failure. Something was wrong.
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