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The others flash by.... Van's out of the race! ... An', Bostil an', gentlemen, there ain't anythin' more to this race but a red hoss!" Bostil's heart gave a great leap and then seemed to stand still. He was half cold, half hot. What a horrible, sickening disappointment. Bostil rolled out a cursing query. Holley's answer was short and sharp. The King was out! Bostil raved. He could not see.
He trailed his vague feelings back to a subtle shock he had sustained in a last look at Creech's dark, somber face. It had been the face of a Nemesis. All about Creech breathed silent, revengeful force. Slone worked out in his plodding thought why that fact should oppress him; and it was because in striking Bostil old Creech must strike through Bostil's horses and his daughter.
Bostil's outward appearance and his speech and action never reflected all the workings of his mind. No one would ever know the depth of his bitter disappointment at the outcome of the race. With Creech's Blue Roan out of the way, another horse, swifter and more dangerous, had come along to spoil the King's chance.
Then he led the way through the big door into the huge living-room. There were hanging-lights on the walls and blazing sticks on the hearth. Lucy came running in to meet them. It did not escape Bostil's keen eyes that she was dressed in her best white dress. He had never seen her look so sweet and pretty, and, for that matter, so strange.
Holley thrust a quivering, brown hand into Bostil's face. "What did I tell you?" he shouted. "Didn't I say wait?" Bostil threw away all that deep fury of passion, and there seemed only a resistless and speechless admiration left. Then ensued a moment of silence. The riders watched Slone's weary face as it drooped, and Bostil, as he loomed over him. "Where's the red stallion?" queried Bostil.
Bostil's boatmen, Shugrue and Somers, stood knee-deep in the quicksand of the bar, and their efforts to keep free-footed were as strenuous as their handling of the sheep. Presently the flock was all crowded on board, the Indians followed, and then the boatmen slid the unwieldy craft off the sand-bar. Then, each manning a clumsy oar, they pulled up-stream.
She had a hand twisted in the horse's long mane, and as, lithe and supple, she slipped a knee across his broad back she shook a little gantleted fist at Bostil's gray racer. "Sage King, I hate you!" she called, as if the horse were human. "And I'll beat you some day!" Bostil swore by the gods his Sage King was the swiftest horse in all that wild upland country of wonderful horses.
He was raw, an' they say, the maddest feller ever seen in Bostil's Ford!" Lucy was struggling between fear and mirth. She did not look sorry. "Oh! Oh! Oh, Dad!" "Wasn't it great, Lucy?" "But what will he do?" choked Lucy. "Lord only knows. Thet worries me some. Because he never said a word about how he come to lose his clothes or why he had the 'dobe on him. An' sure I never told.
The wives of Bostil's three friends had been helping Aunt Jane prepare the feast, and they added to the merriment. Bostil was not much given to social intercourse he would have preferred to be with his horses and riders but this night he outdid himself as host, amazed his sister Jane, who evidently thought he drank too much, and delighted Lucy.
"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.
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