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Updated: May 11, 2025
The old storekeeper gave him a nudge and pointed underhand to a young man of ragged aspect sitting gloomily on a box. Slone recognized Joel Creech. The fellow surely made a pathetic sight, and Slone pitied him. He looked needy and hungry. "Say," said Slone, impulsively, "want to help me carry some grub an' stuff?" "Howdy!" replied Creech, raising his head. "Sure do."
As he did so he thought of Creech and a blackness enfolded him. He forgot Creech's horses. Something gripped him, burned him some hard and bitter feeling which he thought was hate of Creech. Again the wave of fire ran over him, and his huge hands strained on the cables. The fiend of that fiendish river had entered his soul. He meant ruin to a man. He meant more than ruin.
"Lucy Bostil. An' don't you fergit thet. I'll bet she'll raise more trouble than Bostil when she hears what Joel Creech is tellin'. Fer she's bound to hear it. Van Sickle swears he's a-goin' to tell her an' then beat you up with a quirt." "He is, is he?" snapped Slone, darkly. "I've a hunch Lucy's guessed why you punched Joel. But she wants to know fer sure. Now, Slone, I'll tell her why."
He almost fell. Lucy bounded to Sarchedon. In a rush she was up in the saddle. Joel was running toward her. Blood on his face! Blood on his hands! He was not the Joel Creech she knew. "Stop!" cried Lucy, fiercely. "I'll run you down!" The big black plunged at a touch of spur and came down quivering, ready to bolt. Creech swerved to one side.
"Tell me, then," he began, quietly, with keen gaze roving under the trees and eyes strained tight, "tell me what's come off." "Don't you know?" she queried, in amaze. "Only that for some reason I'm done in Bostil's Ford. It can't be because I punched Joel Creech. I felt it before I met Bostil at the store. He taunted me. We had bitter words.
"Ride on," said Creech, hitting her horse from behind. And Lucy found herself riding single file, with two men and a pack-horse, out upon the windy, dark sage slope. They faced the direction of the monuments, looming now and then so weirdly black and grand against the broad flare of lightning-blazed sky.
"That's a fine thing for you to say," retorted Aunt Jane. "Like as not she'll be fetching that hang-dog Joel Creech up here for you to support." "Auntie!" cried Lucy, her eyes blazing. "Oh, child, you torment me worry me so," said the disappointed woman. "It's all for your sake.... Look at you, Lucy Bostil! A girl of eighteen who comes of a family!
Lucy was unseated, but somehow clung on, and came down with him, finding the saddle. And it seemed, while in the air, she saw a long, snaky, whipping loop of rope shoot out and close just where Sage King's legs had been. She screamed. The horse broke and ran. Lucy, righting herself, looked back to see Joel Creech holding a limp lasso. He had tried to rope the King.
Bostil had always contended in his arguments with riders that a man should eat heartily on the start of a trip so that the finish might find him strong. And Lucy ate, though the coarse fare sickened her. Once she looked curiously at Joel Creech. She felt his eyes upon her, but instantly he averted them. He had grown more haggard and sullen than ever before.
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.
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