"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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion. 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, hoa.r.s.ely.
"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 a.s.sault 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 gra.s.s 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, hoa.r.s.ely. "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, pa.s.sionate 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, pa.s.sionate 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 hoa.r.s.ely.
"If you love me you"ll keep out of his way," replied the girl.