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Updated: May 1, 2025
The Creeches did not loiter over the camp tasks. Lucy was left to herself. The place appeared to be a kind of depression from which the desert rolled away to a bulge against the rosy east, and the rocks behind rose broken and yellow, fringed with cedars.
Once up on the wide, windy slope the reach and color and fragrance seemed to call to Slone irresistibly, and he fell to trailing these tracks just for the love of a skill long unused. Half a mile out the road turned toward Durango. But the Creeches did not continue on that road. They entered the sage. Instantly Slone became curious.
But then it might be the Creeches. Slone had an uneasy return of puzzling thoughts. These, however, did not hinder drowsiness, and, deciding that the first thing in the morning he would trail the Creeches, just to see where they had gone, he fell asleep. In the morning the bright, broad day, with its dispelling reality, made Slone regard himself differently.
Lucy shivered for the Creeches if Slone ever caught up with them, and remembering his wild-horse-hunter's skill at tracking, and the fleet and tireless Wildfire, she grew convinced that Creech could not long hold her captive. For Slone would be wary. He would give no sign of his pursuit. He would steal upon the Creeches in the dark and Lucy shivered again.
Creech gave close and keen scrutiny to the strange face of his son. Then he wheeled away. "Help me pack. An' you, too, Lucy. We've got to rustle out of hyar." Lucy fought a sick faintness that threatened to make her useless. But she tried to help, and presently action made her stronger. The Creeches made short work of that breaking of camp.
It ain't nothin' to git set up about. An' don't tell the old man." "Why not?" demanded Lucy. "Wal, because he's in a queer sort of bad mood lately. It wouldn't be safe. He hates them Creeches. So don't tell him." "All right, Farlane, I won't. Don't you tell, either," replied Lucy, soberly. "Sure I'll keep mum. But if Joel doesn't watch out I'll put a crimp in him myself."
Slone had long ago solved the meaning of the Creeches' flight. They would use Lucy to ransom Bostil's horses, and more than likely they would not let her go back. That they had her was enough for Slone. He was grim and implacable. The eyes of the wild-horse hunter had not searched that basin long before they picked out a dot which was not a rock or a cedar, but a horse.
Before twilight set in Slone saw the Creeches riding out of the lane into the sage, evidently leaving the Ford. This occasioned Slone great relief, but only for a moment. What the Creeches appeared to be doing might not be significant. And he knew if they had stayed in the village that he would have watched them as closely as if he thought they were trying to steal Wildfire.
Then Lucy told him about the great passion of her father about the long, time-honored custom of free-for-all races, and the great races that had been run in the past; about the Creeches and their swift horses; about the rivalry and speculation and betting; and lastly about the races to be run in a few weeks races so wonderful in prospect that even the horse-thief, Cordts, had begged to be allowed to attend.
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