Wildfire and the Heritage of the Desert (5 page)

“Cordts seemed to think his word was guarantee of his good faith. He said he'd send an Indian in here to find out if he can come to the races. I reckon, Bostil, thet it wouldn't hurt none to let him come. An' hold your gun hand fer the time he swears he'll be honest. Queer deal, ain't it, men? A hoss-thief turnin' honest jest to see a race! Beats me! Bostil, it's a cheap way to get at least a little honesty from Cordts. An' refusin' might rile him bad. When all's said Cordts ain't as bad as he could be.”

“I'll let him come,” replied Bostil, breathing deep. “But it'll be hard to see him, rememberin' how he's robbed me, an' what he's threatened. An' I ain't lettin' him come to bribe a few weeks' decency from him. I'm doin' it for only one reason.… Because I know he loves the King—how he wants to see the King run away from the field thet day! Thet's why!”

There was a moment of silence, during which all turned to Creech. He was a stalwart man, no longer young, with a lined face, deep-set, troubled eyes, and white, thin beard.

“Bostil, if Cordts loves the King thet well, he's in fer heartbreak,” said Creech, with a ring in his voice.

Down crashed Bostil's heavy boots and fire flamed in his gaze. The other men laughed, and Brackton interposed:

“Hold on, you boy riders!” he yelled. “We ain't a-goin' to have any arguments like thet.… Now, Bostil, it's settled, then? You'll let Cordts come?”

“Glad to have him,” replied Bostil.

“Good. An' now mebbe we'd better get down to the bizness of this here meetin'.”

They seated themselves around the table, upon which Bostil laid an old and much-soiled ledger and a stub of a lead-pencil.

“First we'll set the time,” he said, with animation, “an' then pitch into details.… What's the date?”

No one answered, and presently they all looked blankly from one to the other.

“It's April, ain't it?” queried Holley.

That assurance was as close as they could get to the time of year.

“Lucy!” called Bostil, in a loud voice.

She came running in, anxious, almost alarmed.

“Goodness! You made us jump! What on earth is the matter?”

“Lucy, we want to know the date,” replied Bostil.

“Date! Did you have to scare Auntie and me out of our wits just for that?”

“Who scared you? This is important, Lucy. What's the date?”

“It's a week to-day since last Tuesday,” answered Lucy, sweetly.

“Huh! Then it's Tuesday again,” said Bostil, laboriously writing it down. “Now, what's the date?”

“Don't you remember?”

“Remember? I never knew.”

“Dad!… Last Tuesday was my birthday—the day you
did not
give me a horse!”

“Aw, so it was,” rejoined Bostil, confused at her reproach. “An' thet date was—let's see—April sixth.… Then this is April thirteenth. Much obliged, Lucy. Run back to your aunt now. This hoss talk won't interest you.”

Lucy tossed her head. “I'll bet I'll have to straighten out the whole thing.” Then with a laugh she disappeared.

“Three days beginnin'—say June first. June first—second, an' third. How about thet for the races?”

Everybody agreed, and Bostil laboriously wrote that down. Then they planned the details. Purses and prizes, largely donated by Bostil and Muncie, the rich members of the community, were recorded. The old rules were adhered to. Any rider or any Indian could enter any horse in any race, or as many horses as he liked in as many races. But by winning one race he excluded himself from the others. Bostil argued for a certain weight in riders, but the others ruled out this suggestion. Special races were arranged for the Indians, with saddles, bridles, blankets, guns as prizes.

All this appeared of absorbing interest to Bostil. He perspired freely. There was a gleam in his eye, betraying excitement. When it came to arranging the details of the big race between the high-class racers, then he grew intense and harder to deal with. Many points had to go by vote. Muncie and Williams both had fleet horses to enter in this race; Holley had one; Creech had two; there were sure to be several Indians enter fast mustangs; and Bostil had the King and four others to choose from. Bostil held out stubbornly for a long race. It was well known that Sage King was unbeatable in a long race. If there were any chance to beat him it must be at short distance. The vote went against Bostil, much to his chagrin, and the great race was set down for two miles.

“But two miles!… Two miles!” he kept repeating. “Thet's Blue Roan's distance. Thet's his distance. An' it ain't fair to the King!”

His guests, excepting Creech, argued with him, explained, reasoned, showed him that it was fair to all concerned. Bostil finally acquiesced, but he was not happy. The plain fact was that he was frightened.

When the men were departing Bostil called Creech back into the sitting-room. Creech appeared surprised, yet it was evident that he would have been glad to make friends with Bostil.

“What'll you take for the roan?” Bostil asked, tersely, as if he had never asked that before.

“Bostil, didn't we thresh thet out before—an'
fell
out over it?” queried Creech, with a deprecating spread of his hands.

“Wal, we can fall in again, if you'll sell or trade the hoss.”

“I'm sorry, but I can't.”

“You need money an' hosses, don't you?” demanded Bostil, brutally. He had no conscience in a matter of horse-dealing.

“Lord knows, I do,” replied Creech.

“Wal, then, here's your chance. I'll give you five hundred in gold an' Sarchedon to boot.”

Creech looked as if he had not heard aright. Bostil repeated the offer.

“No,” replied Creech.

“I'll make it a thousand an' throw Plume in with Sarch,” flashed Bostil.

“No!” Creech turned pale and swallowed hard.

“Two thousand an' Dusty Ben along with the others?”

This was an unheard-of price to pay for any horse. Creech saw that Bostil was desperate. It was an almost overpowering temptation. Evidently Creech resisted it only by applying all his mind to the thought of his clean-limbed, soft-eyed, noble horse.

Bostil did not give Creech time to speak. “Twenty-five hundred an' Two Face along with the rest!”

“My God, Bostil—stop it! I can't
part
with Blue Roan. You're rich an' you've no heart. Thet I always knew. At least to me you never had, since I owned them two racers. Didn't I beg you, a little time back, to lend me a few hundred? To meet thet debt? An' you wouldn't unless I'd sell the hosses. An' I had to lose my sheep. Now I'm a poor man—gettin' poorer all the time. But I won't sell or trade Blue Roan, not for all you've got!”

Creech seemed to gain strength with his speech and passion with the strength. His eyes glinted at the hard, paling face of his rival. He raised a clenching fist.

“An' by God, I'm goin' to win thet race!”

*   *   *

During that week Lucy had heard many things about Joel Creech, and some of them were disquieting.

Some rider had not only found Joel's clothes on the trail, but he had recognized the track of the horse Lucy rode, and at once connected her with the singular discovery. Coupling that with Joel's appearance in the village incased in a heaving armor of adobe, the riders guessed pretty close to the truth. For them the joke was tremendous. And Joel Creech was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule. The riders made life unbearable for him. They had fun out of it as long as Joel showed signs of taking the joke manfully, which was not long, and then his resentment won their contempt. That led to sarcasm on their part and bitter anger on his. It came to Lucy's ears that Joel began to act and talk strangely. She found out that the rider Van had knocked Joel down in Brackton's store and had kicked a gun out of his hand. Van laughed off the rumor and Brackton gave her no satisfaction. Moreover, she heard no other rumors. The channels of gossip had suddenly closed to her. Bostil, when questioned by Lucy, swore in a way that amazed her, and all he told her was to leave Creech alone. Finally, when Muncie discharged Joel, who worked now and then, Lucy realized that something was wrong with Joel and that she was to blame for it.

She grew worried and anxious and sorry, but she held her peace, and determined to find out for herself what was wrong. Every day when she rode out into the sage she expected to meet him, or at least see him somewhere; nevertheless days went by and there was no sign of him.

One afternoon she saw some Indians driving sheep down the river road toward the ford, and, acting upon impulse, she turned her horse after them.

Lucy seldom went down the river road. Riding down and up was merely work, and a horse has as little liking for it as she had. Usually it was a hot, dusty trip, and the great, dark, overhanging walls had a depressing effect upon her. She always felt awe at the gloomy cañon and fear at the strange, murmuring red river. But she started down this afternoon in the hope of meeting Joel. She had a hazy idea of telling him she was sorry for what she had done, and of asking him to forget it and pay no more heed to the riders.

The sheep raised a dust-cloud in the sandy wash where the road wound down, and Lucy hung back to let them get farther ahead. Gradually the tiny roar of pattering hoofs and the blended bleating and baaing died away. The dust-cloud, however, hung over the head of the ravine, and Lucy had to force Sarchedon through it. Sarchedon did not mind sand and dust, but he surely hated the smell of sheep. Lucy seldom put a spur to Sarchedon; still, she gave him a lash with her quirt, and then he went on obediently, if disgustedly. He carried his head like a horse that wondered why his mistress preferred to drive him down into an unpleasant hole when she might have been cutting the sweet, cool sage wind up on the slope.

The wash, with its sand and clay walls, dropped into a gulch, and there was an end of green growths. The road led down over solid rock. Gradually the rims of the gorge rose, shutting out the light and the cliffs. It was a winding road, and one not safe to tarry on in a stormy season. Lucy had seen boulders weighing a ton go booming down that gorge during one of the sudden fierce desert storms, when a torrent of water and mud and stone went plunging on to the river. The ride through here was short, though slow. Lucy always had time to adjust her faculties for the overpowering contrast these lower regions presented. Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen thunder of the river. The river was low, too, for otherwise there would have been a deafening roar.

Presently she came out upon a lower branch of the cañon, into a great red-walled space, with the river still a thousand feet below, and the cliffs towering as high above her. The road led down along this rim where to the left all was open, across to the split and peaked wall opposite. The river appeared to sweep round a bold, bulging corner a mile above. It was a wide, swift, muddy, turbulent stream. A great bar of sand stretched out from the shore. Beyond it, through the mouth of an intersecting cañon, could be seen a clump of cotton woods and willows that marked the home of the Creeches. Lucy could not see the shore nearest her, as it was almost directly under her. Besides, in this narrow road, on a spirited horse, she was not inclined to watch the scenery. She hurried Sarchedon down and down, under the overhanging brows of rock, to where the rim sloped out and failed. Here was a half-acre of sand, with a few scant willows, set down seemingly in a dent at the base of the giant, beetling cliffs. The place was light, though the light seemed a kind of veiled red, and to Lucy always ghastly. She could not have been joyous with that river moaning before her, even if it had been up on a level, in the clear and open day. As a little girl eight years old she had conceived a terror and hatred of this huge, jagged rent so full of red haze and purple smoke and the thunder of rushing waters. And she had never wholly outgrown it. The joy of the sun and wind, the rapture in the boundless open, the sweetness in the sage—these were not possible here. Something mighty and ponderous, heavy as those colossal cliffs, weighted down her spirit. The voice of the river drove out any dream. Here was the incessant frowning presence of destructive forces of nature. And the ford was associated with catastrophe—to sheep, to horses and to men.

Lucy rode across the bar to the shore where the Indians were loading the sheep into an immense rude flatboat. As the sheep were frightened, the loading was no easy task. Their bleating could be heard above the roar of the river. 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. Along shore were whirling, slow eddies, and there rowing was possible. Out in that swift current it would have been folly to try to contend with it, let alone make progress. The method of crossing was to row up along the shore as far as a great cape of rock jutting out, and there make into the current, and while drifting down pull hard to reach the landing opposite. Heavily laden as the boat was, the chances were not wholly in favor of a successful crossing.

Lucy watched the slow, laborious struggle of the boatmen with the heavy oars until she suddenly remembered the object of her visit down to the ford. She appeared to be alone on her side of the river. At the landing opposite, however, were two men; and presently Lucy recognized Joel Creech and his father. A second glance showed Indians with burros, evidently waiting for the boat. Joel Creech jumped into a skiff and shoved off. The elder man, judging by his motions, seemed to be trying to prevent his son from leaving the shore. But Joel began to row up-stream, keeping close to the shore. Lucy watched him. No doubt he had seen her and was coming across. Either the prospect of meeting him or the idea of meeting him there in the place where she was never herself made her want to turn at once and ride back home. But her stubborn sense of fairness overruled that. She would hold her ground solely in the hope of persuading Joel to be reasonable. She saw the big flatboat sweep into line of sight at the same time Joel turned into the current. But while the larger craft drifted slowly the other way, the smaller one came swiftly down and across. Joel swept out of the current into the eddy, rowed across that, and slid the skiff up on the sand-bar. Then he stepped out. He was bareheaded and barefooted, but it was not that which made him seem a stranger to Lucy.