第84章

Lucy did as she was bidden and pulled the blanket over her.The place was gloomy and still.She heard the sound of mustangs' teeth on grass, and the soft footfalls of the men.Presently these sounds ceased.A cold wind blew over her face and rustled in the sage near her.Gradually the chill passed away, and a stealing warmth took its place.Her eyes grew tired.What had happened to her? With eyes closed she thought it was all a dream.Then the feeling of the hard saddle as a pillow under her head told her she was indeed far from her comfortable little room.What would poor Aunt Jane do in the morning when she discovered who was missing? What would Holley do? When would Bostil return? It might be soon and it might be days.And Slone--Lucy felt sorriest for him.For he loved her best.She thrilled at thought of Slone on that grand horse--on her Wildfire.And with her mind running on and on, seemingly making sleep impossible, the thoughts at last became dreams.Lucy awakened at dawn.One hand ached with cold, for it had been outside the blanket.Her hard bed had cramped her muscles.She heard the crackling of fire and smelled cedar smoke.In the gray of morning she saw the Creeches round a camp-fire.

Lucy got up then.Both men saw her, but made no comment.In that cold, gray dawn she felt her predicament more gravely.Her hair was damp.She had ridden nearly all night without a hat.She had absolutely nothing of her own except what was on her body.But Lucy thanked her lucky stars that she had worn the thick riding-suit and her boots, for otherwise, in a summer dress, her condition would soon have been miserable.

"Come an' eat," said Creech."You have sense--an' eat if it sticks in your throat."Bostil had always contended in his arguments with riders that a man should eat heartily on the start of a trip so that the finish might find him strong.And Lucy ate, though the coarse fare sickened her.Once she looked curiously at Joel Creech.She felt his eyes upon her, but instantly he averted them.He had grown more haggard and sullen than ever before.

The Creeches did not loiter over the camp tasks.Lucy was left to herself.The place appeared to be a kind of depression from which the desert rolled away to a bulge against the rosy east, and the rocks behind rose broken and yellow, fringed with cedars.

"Git the hosses in, if you want to," Creech called to her, and then as Lucy started off to where the mustangs grazed she heard him curse his son."Come back hyar! Leave the girl alone or I'll rap you one!"Lucy drove three of the mustangs into camp, where Creech began to saddle them.

The remaining one, the pack animal, Lucy found among the scrub cedars at the base of the low cliffs.When she drove him in Creech was talking hard to Joel, who had mounted.

"When you come back, work up this canyon till you git up.It heads on the pine plateau.I can't miss seein' you, or any one, long before you git up on top.

An' you needn't come without Bostil's hosses.You know what to tell Bostil if he threatens you, or refuses to send his hosses, or turns his riders on my trail.Thet's all.Now git!"Joel Creech rode away toward the rise in the rolling, barren desert.

"An' now we'll go on," said Creech to Lucy.

When he had gotten all in readiness he ordered Lucy to follow closely in his tracks.He entered a narrow cleft in the low cliffs which wound in and out, and was thick with sage and cedars.Lucy, riding close to the cedars, conceived the idea of plucking the little green berries and dropping them on parts of the trail where their tracks would not show.Warily she filled the pockets of her jacket.

Creech led the way without looking back, and did not seem to care where the horses stepped.The time had not yet come, Lucy concluded, when he was ready to hide his trail.Presently the narrow cleft opened into a low-walled canyon, full of debris from the rotting cliffs, and this in turn opened into a main canyon with mounting yellow crags.It appeared to lead north.Far in the distance above rims and crags rose in a long, black line like a horizon of dark cloud.

Creech crossed this wide canyon and entered one of the many breaks in the wall.This one was full of splintered rock and weathered shale-- the hardest kind of travel for both man and beast.Lucy was nothing if not considerate of a horse, and here she began to help her animal in all the ways a good rider knows.Much as this taxed her attention, she remembered to drop some of the cedar berries upon hard ground or rocks.And she knew she was leaving a trail for Slone's keen eyes.

That day was the swiftest and the most strenuous in all Lucy Bostil's experience in the open.At sunset, when Creech halted in a niche in a gorge between lowering cliffs, Lucy fell off her horse and lay still and spent on the grass.

Creech had a glance of sympathy and admiration for her, but he did not say anything about the long day's ride.Lucy never in her life before appreciated rest nor the softness of grass nor the relief at the end of a ride.She lay still with a throbbing, burning ache in all her body.Creech, after he had turned the horses loose, brought her a drink of cold water from the brook she heard somewhere near by.

"How--far--did--we--come?" she whispered.

"By the way round I reckon nigh on to sixty miles," he replied."But we ain't half thet far from where we camped last night."Then he set to work at camp tasks.Lucy shook her head when he brought her food, but he insisted, and she had to force it down.Creech appeared rough but kind.After she had become used to the hard, gaunt, black face she saw sadness and thought in it.One thing Lucy had noticed was that Creech never failed to spare a horse, if it was possible.He would climb on foot over bad places.