aw, that Creech wore a different aspect.

"Grand wild hoss! He did what Blue was a-goin' to do--beat thet there
d--d Bostil's King!"

Creech wagged his head. He was gloomy and strange. His eyes were
unpleasant to look into. His face changed. And he mumbled. Slone pitied
him the more, but wished to see the last of him. Creech stayed on,
however, and grew stranger and more talkative during the meal. He
repeated things often--talked disconnectedly, and gave other
indications that he was not wholly right in his mind. Yet Slone
suspected that Creech's want of balance consisted only in what
concerned horses and the Bostils. And Slone, wanting to learn all he
could, encouraged Creech to talk about his father and the racers and
the river and boat, and finally Bostil.

Slone became convinced that, whether young Creech was half crazy or
not, he knew his father's horses were doomed, and that the boat at the
ferry had been cut adrift. Slone could not understand why he was
convinced, but he was. Finally Creech told how he had gone down to the
river only a day before; how he had found the flood still raging, but
much lower; how he had worked round the cliffs and had pulled up the
rope cables to find they had been cut.

"You see, Bostil cut them when he didn't need to," continued Creech,
shrewdly. "But he didn't know the flood was comin' down so quick. He
was afeared we'd come across an' git the boat thet night. An' he meant
to take away them cut cables. But he hadn't no time."

"Bostil?" queried Slone, as he gazed hard at Creech. The fellow had
told that rationally enough. Slone wondered if Bostil could have been
so base. No! and yet--when it came to horses Bostil was scarcely human.

Slone's query served to send Creech off on another tangent which wound
up in dark, mysterious threats. Then Slone caught the name of Lucy. It
abruptly killed his sympathy for Creech.

"What's the girl got to do with it?" he demanded, angrily. "If you want
to talk to me don't use her name."

"I'll use her name when I want," shouted Creech.

"Not to me!"

"Yes, to you, mister. I ain't carin' a d--n fer you!"

"You crazy loon!" exclaimed Slone, with impatience and disgust added to
anger. "What's the use of being decent to you?"

Creech crouched low, his hands digging like claws into the table, as if
he were making ready to spring. At that instant he was hideous.

"Crazy, am I?" he yelled. "Mebbe not d--n crazy! I kin tell you're gone
on Luc