Wildfire (1999) Page 22

  "If I go away from here an' leave Wildfire for Lucy--do you think she could keep him? Wouldn't Bostil take him from her?"

  "Wal, son, if he tried thet on Lucy she'd jump Wildfire an' hit your trail an' hang on to it till she found you."

  "What'll you tell Bostil?" asked Slone, half beside himself.

  "I'm consarned if I know," replied Holley. "Mebbe I'll think of some idee. I'll go back now. An' say, son, I reckon you'd better hang close to home. If you meet Bostil down in the village you two'd clash sure. I'll come up soon, but it'll be after dark."

  "Holley, all this is--is good of you," said Slone. "I--I'll--"

  "Shut up, son," interrupted the rider, dryly. "Thet's your only weakness, so far as I can see. You say too much."

  Holley started down then, his long, clinking spurs digging into the steep path. He left Slone a prey to deep thoughts at once anxious and dreamy.

  Next day Slone worked hard all day, looking forward to nightfall, expecting that Holley would come up. He tried to resist the sweet and tantalizing anticipation of a message from Lucy, but in vain. The rider had immeasurably uplifted Slone's hope that Lucy, at least, cared for him. Not for a moment all day could Slone drive away the hope. At twilight he was too eager to eat--too obsessed to see the magnificent sunset. But Holley did not come, and Slone went to bed late, half sick with disappointment.

  The next day was worse. Slone found work irksome, yet he held to it. On the third day he rested and dreamed, and grew doubtful again, and then moody. On the fourth day Slone found he needed supplies that he must obtain from the store. He did not forget Holley's warning, but he disregarded it, thinking there would scarcely be a chance of meeting Bostil at midday.

  There were horses standing, bridles down, before Brackton's place, and riders lounging at the rail and step. Some of these men had been pleasant to Slone on earlier occasions. This day they seemed not to see him. Slone was tingling all over when he went into the store. Some deviltry was afoot! He had an angry thought that these riders could not have minds of their own. Just inside the door Slone encountered Wetherby, the young rancher from Durango. Slone spoke, but Wetherby only replied with an insolent stare. Slone did not glance at the man to whom Wetherby was talking. Only a few people were inside the store, and Brackton was waiting upon them. 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.

  "Have you got the money?" asked Brackton, as if addressing one he would not trust.

  "Yes," replied Slone, growing red under an insult that he knew Wetherby had heard.

  Brackton handed out the supplies and received the money, without a word. He held his head down. It was a singular action for a man used to dealing fairly with every one. Slone felt outraged. He hurried out of the place, with shame burning him, with his own eyes downcast, and in his hurry he bumped square into a burly form. Slone recoiled --looked up. Bostil! The old rider was eying him with cool speculation.

  "Wal, are you drunk?" he queried, without any particular expression.

  Yet the query was to Slone like a blow. It brought his head up with a jerk, his glance steady and keen on Bostil's.

  "Bostil, you know I don't drink," he said.

  "A-huh! I know a lot about you, Slone. . . . I heard you bought Vorhees's place, up on the bench."

  "Yes."

  "Did he tell you it was mortgaged to me for more'n it's worth?"

  "No, he didn't."

  "Did he make over any papers to you?"

  "No."

  "Wal, if it interests you I'll show you papers thet proves the property's mine."

  Slone suffered a pang. The little home had grown dearer and dearer to him.

  "All right, Bostil. If it's yours--it's yours," he said, calmly enough.

  "I reckon I'd drove you out before this if I hadn't felt we could make a deal."

  "We can't agree on any deal, Bostil," replied Slone, steadily. It was not what Bostil said, but the way he said it, the subtle meaning and power behind it, that gave Slone a sense of menace and peril. These he had been used to for years; he could meet them. But he was handicapped here because it seemed that, though he could meet Bostil face to face, he could not fight him. For he was Lucy's father. Slone's position, the impotence of it, rendered him less able to control his temper.

  "Why can't we?" demanded Bostil. "If you wasn't so touchy we could. An' let me say, young feller, thet there's more reason now thet you DO make a deal with me."

  "Deal? What about?"

  "About your red hoss."

  "Wildfire! . . . No deals, Bostil," returned Slone, and made as if to pass him.

  The big hand that forced Slone back was far from gentle, and again he felt the quick rush of blood.

  "Mebbe I can tell you somethin' thet'll make you sell Wildfire," said Bostil.

  "Not if you talked yourself dumb!" flashed Slone. There was no use to try to keep cool with this Bostil, if he talked horses. "I'll race Wildfire against the King. But no more."

  "Race! Wal, we don't run races around here without stakes," replied Bostil, with deep scorn. "An' what can you bet? Thet little dab of prize money is gone, an' wouldn't be enough to meet me. You're a strange one in these parts. I've pride an' reputation to uphold. You brag of racin' with me--an' you a beggarly rider! . . . You wouldn't have them clothes an' boots if my girl hadn't fetched them to you."

  The riders behind Bostil laughed. Wetherby's face was there in the door, not amused, but hard with scorn and something else. Slone felt a sickening, terrible gust of passion. It fairly shook him. And as the wave subsided the quick cooling of skin and body pained him like a burn made with ice.

  "Yes, Bostil, I'm what you say," responded Slone, and his voice seemed to fill his ears. "But you're dead wrong when you say I've nothin' to bet on a race."

  "An' what'll you bet?"

  "My life an' my horse!"

  The riders suddenly grew silent and intense. Bostil vibrated to that. He turned white. He more than any rider on the uplands must have felt the nature of that offer.

  "Ag'in what?" he demanded, hoarsely.

  "YOUR DAUGHTER LUCY!"

  One instant the surprise held Bostil mute and motionless. Then he seemed to expand. His huge bulk jerked into motion and he bellowed like a mad bull.

  Slone saw the blow coming, made no move to avoid it. The big fist took him square on the mouth and chin and laid him flat on the ground. Sight failed Slone for a little, and likewise ability to move. But he did not lose consciousness. His head seemed to have been burst into rays and red mist that blurred his eyes. Then these cleared away, leaving intense pain. He started to get up, his brain in a whirl. Where was his gun? He had left it at home. But for that he would have killed Bostil. He had already killed one man. The thing was a burning flash--then all over! He could do it again. But Bostil was Lucy's father!

  Slone gathered up the packages of supplies, and without looking at the men he hurried away. He seemed possessed of a fury to turn and run back. Some force, like an invisible hand, withheld him. When he reached the cabin he shut himself in, and lay on his bunk, forgetting that the place did not belong to him, alive only to the mystery of his trouble, smarting with the shame of the assault upon him. It was dark before he composed himself and went out, and then he had not the desire to eat. He made no move to open the supplies of food, did not even make a light. But he went out to take grass and water to the horses. When he returned to the cabin a man was standing at the porch. Slone recognized Holley's shape and then his voice.

  "Son, you raised the devil to-day."

  "Holley, don't you go back on me!" cried Slone. "I was driven!"

  "Don't talk so loud," whispered the rider in return. "I've only a minnit. . . . Here--a letter from Lucy. . . .
An', son, don't git the idee thet I'll go back on you."

  Slone took the letter with trembling fingers. All the fury and gloom instantly fled. Lucy had written him! He could not speak.

  "Son, I'm double-crossin' the boss, right this minnit!" whispered Holley, hoarsely. "An' the same time I'm playin' Lucy's game. If Bostil finds out he'll kill me. I mustn't be ketched up here. But I won't lose track of you--wherever you go."

  Holley slipped away stealthily in the dusk, leaving Slone with a throbbing heart.

  "Wherever you go!" he echoed. "Ah! I forgot! I can't stay here."

  Lucy's letter made his fingers tingle--made them so hasty and awkward that he had difficulty in kindling blaze enough to see to read. The letter was short, written in lead-pencil on the torn leaf of a ledger. Slone could not read rapidly--those years on the desert had seen to that--and his haste to learn what Lucy said bewildered him. At first all the words blurred:

  Come at once to the bench in the cottonwoods. I'll meet you there. My heart is breaking. It's a lie--a lie--what they say. I'll swear you were with me the night the boat was cut adrift. I KNOW you didn't do that. I know who. . . . Oh, come! I will stick to you. I will run off with you. I love you!"

  CHAPTER XV

  Slone's heart leaped to his throat, and its beating choked his utterances of rapture and amaze and dread. But rapture dominated the other emotions. He could scarcely control the impulse to run to meet Lucy, without a single cautious thought.

  He put the precious letter inside his blouse, where it seemed to warm his breast. He buckled on his gun-belt, and, extinguishing the light, he hurried out.

  A crescent moon had just tipped the bluff. The village lanes and cabins and trees lay silver in the moon-light. A lonesome coyote barked in the distance. All else was still. The air was cool, sweet, fragrant. There appeared to be a glamour of light, of silence, of beauty over the desert.

  Slone kept under the dark lee of the bluff and worked around so that he could be above the village, where there was little danger of meeting any one. Yet presently he had to go out of the shadow into the moon-blanched lane. Swift and silent as an Indian he went along, keeping in the shade of what trees there were, until he came to the grove of cottonwoods. The grove was a black mystery lanced by silver rays. He slipped in among the trees, halting every few steps to listen. The action, the realization had helped to make him cool, to steel him, though never before in his life had he been so exalted. The pursuit and capture of Wildfire, at one time the desire of his heart, were as nothing to this. Love had called him--and life--and he knew death hung in the balance. If Bostil found him seeking Lucy there would be blood spilled. Slone quaked at the thought, for the cold and ghastly oppression following the death he had meted out to Sears came to him at times. But such thoughts were fleeting; only one thought really held his mind--and the one was that Lucy loved him, had sent strange, wild, passionate words to him.

  He found the narrow path, its white crossed by slowly moving black bars of shadow, and stealthily he followed this, keen of eye and ear, stopping at every rustle. He well knew the bench Lucy had mentioned. It was in a remote corner of the grove, under big trees near the spring. Once Slone thought he had a glimpse of white. Perhaps it was only moonlight. He slipped on and on, and when beyond the branching paths that led toward the house he breathed freer. The grove appeared deserted. At last he crossed the runway from the spring, smelled the cool, wet moss and watercress, and saw the big cottonwood, looming dark above the other trees. A patch of moonlight brightened a little glade just at the edge of dense shade cast by the cottonwood. Here the bench stood. It was empty!

  Slone's rapture vanished. He was suddenly chilled. She was not there! She might have been intercepted. He would not see her. The disappointment, the sudden relaxation, was horrible. Then a white, slender shape flashed from beside the black tree-trunk and flew toward him. It was noiseless, like a specter, and swift as the wind. Was he dreaming? He felt so strange. Then--the white shape reached him and he knew.

  Lucy leaped into his arms.

  "Lin! Lin! Oh, I'm so--so glad to see you!" she whispered. She seemed breathless, keen, new to him, not in the least afraid nor shy. Slone could only hold her. He could not have spoken, even if she had given him a chance. "I know everything--what they accuse you of--how the riders treated you--how my dad struck you. Oh! . . . He's a brute! I hate him for that. Why didn't you keep out of his way? . . . Van saw it all. Oh, I hate him, too! He said you lay still--where you fell! . . . Dear Lin, that blow may have hurt you dreadfully--shamed you because you couldn't strike back at my dad--but it reached me, too. It hurt me. It woke my heart. . . . Where--where did he hit you? Oh, I've seen him hit men! His terrible fists!"

  "Lucy, never mind," whispered Slone. "I'd stood to be shot just for this."

  He felt her hands softly on his face, feeling around tenderly till they found the swollen bruise on mouth and chin.

  "Ah! . . . He struck you. And I--I'll kiss you," she whispered. "If kisses will make it well--it'll be well!"

  She seemed strange, wild, passionate in her tenderness. She lifted her face and kissed him softly again and again and again, till the touch that had been exquisitely painful to his bruised lips became rapture. Then she leaned back in his arms, her hands on his shoulders, white-faced, dark-eyed, and laughed up in his face, lovingly, daringly, as if she defied the world to change what she had done.

  "Lucy! Lucy! . . . He can beat me--again!" said Slone, low and hoarsely.

  "If you love me you'll keep out of his way," replied the girl.

  "If I love you? . . . My God! . . . I've felt my heart die a thousand times since that mornin'--when--when you--"

  "Lin, I didn't know," she interrupted, with sweet, grave earnestness. "I know now!"

  And Slone could not but know, too, looking at her; and the sweetness, the eloquence, the noble abandon of her avowal sounded to the depths of him. His dread, his resignation, his shame, all sped forever in the deep, full breath of relief with which he cast off that burden. He tasted the nectar of happiness, the first time in his life. He lifted his head--never, he knew, to lower it again. He would be true to what she had made him.

  "Come in the shade," he whispered, and with his arm round her he led her to the great tree-trunk. "Is it safe for you here? An' how long can you stay?"

  "I had it out with Dad--left him licked once in his life," she replied. "Then I went to my room, fastened the door, and slipped out of my window. I can stay out as long as I want. No one will know."

  Slone's heart throbbed. She was his. The clasp of her hands on his, the gleam of her eyes, the white, daring flash of her face in the shadow of the moon--these told him she was his. How it had come about was beyond him, but he realized the truth. What a girl! This was the same nerve which she showed when she had run Wildfire out in front of the fleetest horses in the uplands.

  "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. He told before all of them how the outfit I wore you gave me. An' then I dared him to race the King. My horse an' my life against YOU!"

  "Yes, I know," she whispered, softly. "It's all over town. . . . Oh, Lin! it was a grand bet! And Bostil four-flushed, as the riders say. For days a race between Wildfire and the King had been in the air. There'll never be peace in Bostil's Ford again till that race is run."

  "But, Lucy, could Bostil's wantin' Wildfire an' hatin' me because I won't sell--could that ruin me here at the Ford?"

  "It could. But, Lin, there's more. Oh, I hate to tell you!" she whispered, passionately. "I thought you'd know. . . . Joel Creech swore you cut the ropes on the ferry-boat and sent it adrift."

  "The loon!" ejaculated Slone, and he laughed low in both anger and ri
dicule. "Lucy, that's only a fool's talk."

  "He's crazy. Oh, if I ever get him in front of me again when I'm on Sarch--I'll--I'll. . . ." She ended with a little gasp and leaned a moment against Slone. He felt her heart beat--felt the strong clasp of her hands. She was indeed Bostil's flesh and blood, and there was that in her dangerous to arouse.

  "Lin, the folks here are queer," she resumed, more calmly. "For long years Dad has ruled them. They see with his eyes and talk with his voice. Joel Creech swore you cut those cables. Swore he trailed you. Brackton believed him. Van believed him. They told my father. And he--my dad--God forgive him! he jumped at that. The village as one person now believes you sent the boat adrift so Creech's horses could not cross and you could win the race."

  "Lucy, if it wasn't so--so funny I'd be mad as--as--" burst out Slone.

  "It isn't funny. It's terrible. . . . I know who cut those cables. . . Holley knows. . . . DAD knows--an', oh, Lin--I--hate--I hate my own father!"

  "My God!" gasped Slone, as the full signification burst upon him. Then his next thought was for Lucy. "Listen, dear--you mustn't say that," he entreated. "He's your father. He's a good man every way except when he's after horses. Then he's half horse. I understand him. I feel sorry for him. . . . An' if he's throwed the blame on me, all right. I'll stand it. What do I care? I was queered, anyhow, because I wouldn't part with my horse. It can't matter so much if people think I did that just to help win a race. But if they knew your--your father did it, an' if Creech's horses starve, why it'd be a disgrace for him--an' you."

  "Lin Slone--you'll accept the blame!" she whispered, with wide, dark eyes on him, hands at his shoulders.

  "Sure I will," replied Slone. "I can't be any worse off."

  "You're better than all of them--my rider!" she cried, full-voiced and tremulous. "Lin, you make me love you so--it--it hurts!" And she seemed about to fling herself into his arms again. There was a strangeness about her--a glory. "But you'll not take the shame of that act. For I won't let you. I'll tell my father I was with you when the boat was cut loose. He'll believe me."