as consummated, leaving Slone still with half of the money
that had been his prize in the race. He felt elated. He was rich. He
owned two horses--one the grandest in all the uplands, the other the
faithfulest--and he owned a neat little cabin where it was a joy to sit
and look out, and a corral which would let him sleep at night, and he
had money to put into supplies and furnishings, and a garden. After he
drank out of the spring that bubbled from under the bluff he told
himself it alone was worth the money.

"Looks right down on Bostil's place," Slone soliloquized, with glee.
"Won't he just be mad! An' Lucy! ... Whatever's she goin' to think?"

The more Slone looked around and thought, the more he became convinced
that good fortune had knocked at his door at last. And when he returned
to Brackton's he was in an exultant mood. The old storekeeper gave him
a nudge and pointed underhand to a young man of ragged aspect sitting
gloomily on a box. Slone recognized Joel Creech. The fellow surely made
a pathetic sight, and Slone pitied him. He looked needy and hungry.

"Say," said Slone, impulsively, "want to help me carry some grub an'
stuff?"

"Howdy!" replied Creech, raising his head. "Sure do."

Slone sustained the queerest shock of his life when he met the gaze of
those contrasting eyes. Yet he did not believe that his strange feeling
came from sight of different-colored eyes. There was an instinct or
portent in that meeting.

He purchased a bill of goods from Brackton, and, with Creech helping,
carried it up to the cabin under the bluff. Three trips were needed to
pack up all the supplies, and meanwhile Creech had but few words to
say, and these of no moment. Slone offered him money, which he refused.

"I'll help you fix up, an' eat a bite," he said. "Nice up hyar."

He seemed rational enough and certainly responded to kindness. Slone
found that Vorhees had left the cabin so clean there was little
cleaning to do. An open fireplace of stone required some repair and
there was wood to cut.

"Joel, you start a fire while I go down after my horses," said Slone.

Young Creech nodded and Slone left him there. It was not easy to catch
Wildfire, nor any easier to get him into the new corral; but at last
Slone saw him safely there. And the bars and locks on the gate might
have defied any effort to open or break them quickly. Creech was
standing in the doorway, watching the horses, and somehow Slone saw, or
imagined he s