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Updated: June 21, 2025
Through a rain-blurred window Mary Hope saw him run to the stable, lead out Coaley who had taken refuge there, vault into the saddle without troubling about the stirrup, and come thundering back past the house and out of the gate, his head bent to the storm. She looked at the clock. Three hours? He could never do it in three hours!
Coaley, plainly glad to be out of his prison, stepped daintily along in a rocking half trot that would carry him more miles in a day than any other horse in the country could cover, and bring him to the journey's end with springy gait and head held proudly, ears twitching, ready for more miles if his rider wanted more.
To interfere in a love affair went against the grain, but to let a Lorrigan make love to a Douglas on the heels of the trial was a pill so bitter that he refused to swallow it. He urged Coaley up the trail, his eyes somber with resentment whenever he saw the fresh hoofprints of Lance's horse in the sandy places.
When they emerged upon the other side where the creek gurgled over a patch of rocks like cobblestones, Lance stopped and let him take a sip or two of water, then struck off toward the bluff, letting Coaley choose his own pace, taking care that he kept to low ground where he could not be seen. For an hour he rode and came to the junction of Mill Creek and the Squaw.
Coaley galloped through the gate, passed the house, shied at something lying on the ground, stopped abruptly when Lance pulled sharply on the bit. "Girl sweetheart be game!" Lance said sternly when Mary Hope screamed.
And I don't give a damn how heady any of you kids are; you can't run any rannies on your dad, and you want to put that down in your little red book so you won't forgit it!" He led Coaley from the stable, mounted and rode away up the Slide trail, more than half ashamed of his errand.
Where a faint, little-used trail went obliquely down the bluff to the creek bottom, Lance saw again the hoofprints which the rocky ground had failed to reveal. He could see no reason for taking this roundabout course to go up the creek, but he sent Coaley down the trail, reached the bottom and discovered that the tracks once more struck off into rocky ground.
Lance, however, turned down another small depression where the soil lay bare and Coaley left clean imprints, trotted along it until a welter of rocks made bad footing for the horse, climbed out and went on level. Farther up the valley an abrupt curve in Squaw Creek barred his way with scraggly, thin willow growth that had winding cow trails running through it.
There was Coaley feeling fit for anything, shut up in the box stall while Tom rode another horse; and here was Lance himself taking the trail of the Devil's Tooth outfit at a little after sunrise on a horse tacitly forbidden to all riders save Tom. Coaley, in a place where he must pick his way between boulders, paused and lifted his head, staring back the way they had come.
"Oh, it ain't riding Coaley, altogether. He can ride Coaley and be darned. It's the new airs he's putting on that don't set good with me, Belle. You wanted to make something of Lance, and now, by Henry, you'll have to name the job you've made of him I'd hate to!" Belle put a hand into the cheeping huddle in her hat, lifted out a chick and held it to her cheek.
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