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Updated: July 28, 2025
"I like your hoss," said Bostil, with gruff frankness. But a tinge of red showed under his beard. "Bostil, I'm sorry I can't take you up on the job," rejoined Slone, swiftly. "It's been hard for me to decide. You've been good to me. I'm grateful. But it's time I was tellin' you." "Why can't you?" demanded Bostil, straightening up with a glint in his big eyes.
This time it slipped swiftly. The dust rose in a cloud, almost obscuring the horse. Long streams of gravel rattled down, and waterfalls of sand waved over the steps of the slope. Just as suddenly the avalanche stopped again. Slone saw, from the great oval hole it had left above, that it was indeed deep. That was the reason it did not slide readily.
A blast of wind, as if from a furnace, swept across the plateau, and it was laden with red dust. Slone walked here, where he could have ridden. And he made several miles of up-and-down progress over this rough plateau. The great walls of the opposite side of the cañon loomed appreciably closer. What, Slone wondered, was at the bottom of this rent in the earth?
When he started to cross, the swift current drove him back in several places. The water wreathed white around him. But evidently it was not deep, and finally he crossed. From the other side he looked up again at Nagger and Slone, and, going on, he soon was out of sight in the cottonwoods. "How to get down!" muttered Slone.
An' I'm not wantin' you to call me a liar twice. ... Put your rider up on the King an' come on, right now. I'll " "Slone, shut up an' chase yourself," interrupted Holley "You go to h l!" returned Slone, coolly. There was a moment's silence, in which Slone took Holley's measure. The hawk-eyed old rider may have been square, but he was then thinking only of Bostil.
Wildfire had grazed along no more than a mile in the lead. Slone looked eagerly up the narrowing cañon, but he was not rewarded by a sight of the stallion. As he progressed up a gradually ascending trail he became aware of the fact that the notch he had long looked up to was where the great red walls closed in and almost met.
Slone watched it grow, and, hidden himself, he held his post until he knew the rider was Joel Creech. Slone drew his own horse back and tied him to a sage-bush amidst some scant grass. Then he returned to watch. It appeared Creech was climbing the ridge below Slone, and some distance away. It was a desperate chance Joel ran then, for Slone had set out to kill him.
Slone stepped back, forgotten, it seemed to him. Both joy and sorrow swayed him. He had been exonerated. But this hard and gloomy Creech he knew things. And Slone thought of Lucy. "Who did cut thet thar boat loose?" demanded Brackton, incredulously. Creech gave him a strange glance. "As I was sayin', we come on the boat fast at the head of the long stretch. I seen the cables had been cut.
For Slone an ever-present and growing fascination lay in Wildfire's clear, sharply defined tracks. It was as if every hoof-mark told him something. Once, far up the interminable ascent, he found on a ridge-top tracks showing where Wildfire had halted and turned. "Ha, Nagger!" cried Slone, exultingly. "Look there! He's begun facin' about. He's wonderin' if we're still after him.
He rode down the slope, out upon the billowing floor of the valley. Wildfire looked back to see his pursuers, and then the solemn stillness broke to a wild, piercing whistle. Day after day, camping where night found him, Slone followed the stallion, never losing sight of him till darkness had fallen. The valley was immense and the monuments miles apart.
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