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Updated: June 9, 2025
"Wal, I reckon I've a shade the best of Cordts at gun-play, any day." Lucy regarded the man in surprise. "Oh, it's so strange!" she said. "You'd fight for me. Yet you dragged me for days over these awful rocks! ... Look at me, Creech. Do I look much like Lucy Bostil?" Creech hung his head. "Wal, I reckoned I wasn't a blackguard, but I AM." "You used to care for me when I was little.
About the middle of the afternoon Creech led up over the last declivity, a yellow slope of cedar, to a flat upland covered with pine and high bleached grass. They rested. "We've fooled Cordts, you can be sure of thet," said Creech. "You're a game kid, an', by Gawd! if I had this job to do over I'd never tackle it again!" "Oh, you're sure we've lost him?" implored Lucy. "Sure as I am of death.
Sight of Lucy's fair, sweet face might inflame this Cordts this Kentuckian who had boasted of his love of horses and women. Behind Cordts hung the little dust-colored Sears, like a coiled snake, ready to strike. Bostil felt stir in him a long-dormant fire a stealing along his veins, a passion he hated. "Lucy, go back to the women till you're ready to come out on your hoss," he said.
Mention of Cordts had not always had power to frighten her, but this time she had a return of that shaking fear which had overcome her in the grove the night she was captured. "Cordts all right," replied Creech. "I knowed thet before I seen him. Fer two mornin's back I seen his hoss grazin in thet wide canyon. But I thought I'd slipped by. Some one seen us. Or they seen our trail.
"I'm afraid of Cordts," replied Lucy, with a shiver. "You should have seen him look at me race-day. It made me hot with anger, yet weak, too, somehow. But Dad says I'm never in any danger if I watch out. And I do. Who could catch me on Sarch?" "Any horse can be tripped in the sage. You told me how Joel tried to rope Sage King. Did you ever tell your dad that?" "I forgot.
No, he could not have had any comrades there but horse-thieves, and Creech was above that. If Creech was there he had been held up by Cordts; if Lucy only was with the gang, Creech had been killed. Slone had to force himself to look again. The girl had changed her position. But the light shone upon the men. Creech was not one of the three, nor Cordts, nor any man Slone had seen before.
"Bostil, I 'most forgot," went on Brackton, "Cordts sent word by the Piutes who come to-day thet he'd be here sure." Bostil's face subtly changed. The light seemed to leave it. He did not reply to Brackton did not show that he heard the comment on all sides. Public opinion was against Bostil's permission to allow Cordts and his horse-thieves to attend the races. Bostil appeared grave, regretful.
"Boss," said Holley, "Cordts an' his outfit never rid in. They was last seen by some Navajos headin' for the canyon." "Thet's good!" ejaculated Bostil, in relief. "Wal boys, look after the hosses. ... Slone, just turn Wildfire over to the boys with instructions, an' feel safe." Farlane scratched his head and looked dubious. "I'm wonderin' how safe it'll be fer us."
That was a certain horse. And the horse was Sage King. Cordts was a bad man, a product of the early gold-fields of California and Idaho, an outcast from that evil wave of wanderers retreating back over the trails so madly traveled westward. He became a lord over the free ranges. But more than all else he was a rider. He knew a horse. He was as much horse as Bostil.
In addition to Bostil's growing hatred for the Creeches, he had a great fear of Cordts, the horse-thief. A fear ever restless, ever watchful. Cordts hid back in the untrodden ways. He had secret friends among the riders of the ranges, faithful followers back in the canyon camps, gold for the digging, cattle by the thousand, and fast horses. He had always gotten what he wanted except one thing.
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