ld, but I won't."

Creech might have been plotting the happiness of his own daughter, he
was so deeply in earnest.

"Wal, mebbe you don't love each other so much, after all.... Fast
hosses mean much to a man in this hyar country. I know, fer I lost
mine! ... But they ain't all.... I reckon you young folks don't love so
much, after all."

"But--we--do!" cried Lucy, with a passionate sob. All this talk had
unnerved her.

"Then the only way is fer Slone to lie to Bostil."

"Lie!" exclaimed Lucy.

"Thet's it. Fetch about a race, somehow--one Bostil can't see--an' then
lie an' say the King run Wildfire off his legs."

Suddenly it occurred to Lucy that one significance of this idea of
Creech's had not dawned upon him. "You forget that soon my father will
no longer own Sage King or Sarchedon or Dusty Ben--or any racer. He
loses them or me, I thought. That's what I am here for."

Creech's aspect changed. The eagerness and sympathy fled from his face,
leaving it once more hard and stern. He got up and stood a tall, dark,
and gloomy man, brooding over his loss, as he watched the canyon.
Still, there was in him then a struggle that Lucy felt. Presently he
bent over and put his big hand on her head. It seemed gentle and tender
compared with former contacts, and it made Lucy thrill. She could not
see his face. What did he mean? She divined something startling, and
sat there trembling in suspense.

"Bostil won't lose his only girl--or his favorite hoss! ... Lucy, I
never had no girl. But it seems I'm rememberin' them rides you used to
have on my knee when you was little!"

Then he strode away toward the forest. Lucy watched him with a full
heart, and as she thought of his overcoming the evil in him when her
father had yielded to it, she suffered poignant shame. This Creech was
not a bad man. He was going to let her go, and he was going to return
Bostil's horses when they came. Lucy resolved with a passionate
determination that her father must make ample restitution for the loss
Creech had endured. She meant to tell Creech so.

Upon his return, however, he seemed so strange and forbidding again
that her heart failed her. Had he reconsidered his generous thought?
Lucy almost believed so. These old horse-traders were incomprehensible
in any relation concerning horses. Recalling Creech's intense interest
in Wildfire and in the inevitable race to be run between him and Sage
King, Lucy almost believed that Creech would sacrif