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It was lonely, with the haunting presence of the broken walls ever manifest. But the loneliness seemed full of content. She no longer wondered at Slone's desert life. That might be well for a young man, during those years when adventure and daring called him, but she doubted that it would be well for all of a man's life. And only a little of it ought to be known by a woman.
Above him ran a low, red wall, around which evidently the trail led. At the curve, which was a promontory, scarcely a hundred feet in an airline above him, he saw something red moving, bobbing, coming out into view. It was a horse. Wildfire no farther away than the length of three lassoes! There he stood looking down. He fulfilled all of Slone's dreams. Only he was bigger.
Slone stood back a little in the shadow. Brackton had observed his entrance, but did not greet him. Then Slone absolutely knew that for him the good will of Bostil's Ford was a thing of the past. Presently Brackton was at leisure, but he showed no disposition to attend to Slone's wants. Then Slone walked up to the counter and asked for supplies.
She must try to dissuade him from approaching her father. "Please don't go to Dad." She put a hand on Slone's arm as he stood close up to Wildfire. "I reckon I will," he said. "Lin!" In that word there was the subtle, nameless charm of an intimacy she had never granted him until that moment. He seemed drawn as if by invisible wires. He put a shaking hand on hers and crushed her gauntleted fingers.
His heart seemed too large for his breast. "I tracked you!" he cried, savagely. "I stayed with you! ... An' I got a rope on you! An' I'll ride you you red devil!" The passion of the man was intense. That endless, racking pursuit had brought out all the hardness the desert had engendered in him. Almost hate, instead of love, spoke in Slone's words.
Slone's feelings had undergone some reaction, though he still loved the horse. But it was love mixed with bitterness. More than ever he made up his mind that Lucy should have Wildfire. Then he walked around his place, planning the work he meant to start at once. Several days slipped by with Slone scarcely realizing how they flew.
The spell of those looming grand shafts of colored rock was still strong upon him. One morning Slone had a visitor old Brackton. Slone's cordiality died on his lips before it was half uttered. Brackton's former friendliness was not in evidence. Indeed, he looked at Slone with curiosity and disfavor. "Howdy, Slone! I jest wanted to see what you was doin' up hyar," he said.
A little column of yellow dust curled from the fatal ledge and, catching the wind above, streamed away into the drifting clouds of smoke. A darkness, like the streaming clouds overhead, seemed to blot out Slone's sight, and then passed away, leaving it clearer. Lucy was bending over him, binding a scarf round his shoulder and under his arm. "Lin! It's nothing!" she was saying, earnestly.
Slone's query served to send Creech off on another tangent which wound up in dark, mysterious threats. Then Slone caught the name of Lucy. It abruptly killed his sympathy for Creech. "What's the girl got to do with it?" he demanded, angrily. "If you want to talk to me don't use her name." "I'll use her name when I want," shouted Creech. "Not to me!" "Yes, to you, mister.
He'll kill Creech, an' he'll lay fer Joel goin' back an' he'll kill him.... An' I'll bet my all he'll ride in here with Lucy an' the King!" "Holley, you ain't figurin' on thet red hoss of Slone's ridin' down the King?" Holley laughed as if Bostil's query was the strangest thing of all that poignant day. "Naw. Slone'll lay fer Joel an' rope him like he roped Dick Sears."
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