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Afterward there was a journey with a freight outfit which lasted days and days. June was in charge of a bullwhacker. All she remembered about him was that he had been kind to her and had expended a crackling vocabulary on his oxen. The end of the trek brought her to Piceance Creek and a father now heavily bearded and with long, unkempt hair. They had lived here ever since.
"Won't you tell these men howcome it I rode down to Bear Cat after June?" The Piceance Creek man's jaw tightened. His small eyes flashed hate. "Sure, I'll tell 'em that. About two-three weeks ago Houck showed up at my place an' stayed overnight. I knew him when we was both younger, but I hadn't seen him for a long time. He took a notion to my June.
It would go ill with any of the posse if they should stumble on him. He would have no more mercy than a hunted wild beast. With every minute now his chances of safety increased. The riders were far above him and to the left. With luck he should reach Piceance Creek by morning. He would travel up it till he came to Pete Tolliver's place. He would make the old man give him a horse.
That was foolishness anyhow, what what we did in Blister's office. But I hate to give up the boy on Piceance Creek who was kinda like a brother to me. Do I have to lose him?" There was no need for her big dark eyes to plead with him. His face was working. He bit his lip to keep from breaking down.
He knew now that he would have to take her with him in his thoughts on many a long ride whether he wanted to or not. June turned away from the crowd surrounding the dead mad dog and walked into the hotel. The eyes of more than one man followed the slim, graceful figure admiringly. Much water had run down the Rio Blanco since the days when she had been the Cinderella of Piceance Creek.
A prince of the Kingdom of Joy rode the Piceance trail on a morning glad with the song of birds and the rippling of brooks. Knee to knee with him rode his princess, slim and straight, the pink in her soft smooth cheeks, a shy and eager light in the velvet-dark eyes.
The boy was an orphan and had been brought up in a home with two hundred others. His life had been a friendless one, which may have been the reason that he felt a strong bond of sympathy for the lonely girl on Piceance. He would have liked to be an Aladdin with a wonder lamp by means of which he could magically transform her affairs to good fortune.
Fragments of the facts had drifted out to the boys from the sick-room. Dud tried an experiment. "Where'll we hunt for her up toward Piceance?" Houck deliberated before answering. If he were to tell the truth that she had escaped from him in the hills nine miles down the river these men would know he had been lying when he said he was taking June to her father.
It was difficult for him to identify her with the Cinderella of Piceance Creek except by the eager flash of the eyes in those moments when her spirit seemed to be rushing toward him. They stood on the bank above the edge of the ford. June looked down into the tumbling water. Bob waited for her to speak. He had achieved a capacity for silence and had learned the strength of it.
Across the divide somewhere ran Piceance Creek, but except in a vague way he was not sure of the direction it took. It was possible he might lay hold of a horse this side of Tolliver's. If so, he would not for a moment hesitate to take it. All night he traveled. Once he thought he heard a distant dog, but though he moved in the direction from which the barking had come he did not find any ranch.
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