Part 47 (2/2)
”You used to care for me when I was little. I remember how I used to take rides on your knee.”
”Lucy, I never thought of thet when I ketched you. You was only a means to an end. Bostil hated me. He ruined me. I give up to revenge. An' I could only git thet through you.”
”Creech, I'm not defending Dad. He's--he's no good where horses are concerned. I know he wronged you. Then why didn't you wait and meet him like a man instead of dragging me to this misery?”
”Wal, I never thought of thet, either. I wished I had.” He grew gloomier then and relapsed into silent watching.
Lucy felt better next day, and offered to help Creech at the few camp duties. He would not let her. There was nothing to do but rest and wait, and the idleness appeared to be harder on Creech than on Lucy. He had always been exceedingly active. Lucy divined that every hour his remorse grew keener, and she did all she could think of to make it so.
Creech made her a rude brush by gathering small roots and binding them tightly and cutting the ends square. And Lucy, after the manner of an Indian, got the tangles out of her hair. That day Creech seemed to want to hear Lucy's voice, and so they often fell into conversation. Once he said, thoughtfully:
”I'm tryin' to remember somethin' I heerd at the Ford. I meant to ask you--” Suddenly he turned to her with animation. He who had been so gloomy and l.u.s.terless and dead showed a bright eagerness. ”I heerd you beat the King on a red hoss--a wild hoss! ... Thet must have been a joke--like one of Joel's.”
”No. It's true. An' Dad nearly had a fit!”
”Wal!” Creech simply blazed with excitement. ”I ain't wonderin' if he did. His own girl! Lucy, come to remember, you always said you'd beat thet gray racer.... Fer the Lord's sake tell me all about it.”
Lucy warmed to him because, broken as he was, he could be genuinely glad some horse but his own had won a race. Bostil could never have been like that. So Lucy told him about the race--and then she had to tell about Wildfire, and then about Slone. But at first all of Creech's interest centered round Wildfire and the race that had not really been run. He asked a hundred questions. He was as pleased as a boy listening to a good story. He praised Lucy again and again. He crowed over Bostil's discomfiture. And when Lucy told him that Slone had dared her father to race, had offered to bet Wildfire and his own life against her hand, then Creech was beside himself.
”This hyar Slone--he CALLED Bostil's hand!”
”He's a wild-horse hunter. And HE can trail us!”
”Trail us! Slone? Say, Lucy, are you in love with him?”
Lucy uttered a strange little broken sound, half laugh, half sob. ”Love him! Ah!”
”An' your Dad's ag'in him! Sure Bostil'll hate any rider with a fast hoss. Why didn't the darn fool sell his stallion to your father?”
”He gave Wildfire to me.”
”I'd have done the same. Wal, now, when you git back home what's comin'
of it all?”
Lucy shook her head sorrowfully. ”G.o.d only knows. Dad will never own Wildfire, and he'll never let me marry Slone. And when you take the King away from him to ransom me--then my life will be h.e.l.l, for if Dad sacrifices Sage King, afterward he'll hate me as the cause of his loss.”
”I can sure see the sense of all that,” replied Creech, soberly. And he pondered.
Lucy saw through this man as if he had been an inch of crystal water.
He was no villain, and just now in his simplicity, in his plodding thought of sympathy for her he was lovable.
”It's one h.e.l.l of a muss, if you'll excuse my talk,” said Creech. ”An'
I don't like the looks of what I 'pear to be throwin' in your way....
But see hyar, Lucy, if Bostil didn't give up--or, say, he gits the King back, thet wouldn't make your chance with Slone any brighter.”
”I don't know.”
”Thet race will have to be ran!”
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