rn? 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!"

J