by Zane Grey
The riders were all betting the horse would throw the stranger. And Bostil, seeing the gathering might of Wildfire’s momentum, agreed with them. No horseman could stick on that horse. Suddenly Wildfire tripped in the sage, and went sprawling in the dust, throwing his rider ahead. Both man and beast were quick to rise, but the rider had a foot in the stirrup before Wildfire was under way. Then the horse plunged, ran free, came circling back, and slowly gave way to the rider’s control. Those few moments of frenzied activity had brought out the foam and the sweat—Wildfire was wet. The rider pulled him in before Bostil and dismounted.
“Sometimes I ride him; then sometimes I don’t,” he said, with a smile.
Bostil held out his hand. He liked this rider. He would have liked the frank face, less hard than that of most riders, and the fine, dark eyes, straight and steady, even if their possessor had not come with the open sesame of Bostil’s regard—a grand, wild horse, and the nerve to ride him.
“Wal, you rode him longer’n any of us figgered,” said Bostil, heartily shaking the man’s hand. “I’m Bostil. Glad to meet you.”
“My name’s Slone—Lin Slone,” replied the rider, frankly. “I’m a wild-horse hunter an’ hail from Utah.”
“Utah? How’d you ever get over? Wal, you’ve got a grand hoss—an’ you put a grand rider up on him in the race … My girl Lucy—”
Bostil hesitated. His mind was running swiftly. Back of his thoughts gathered the desire and the determination to get possession of this horse Wildfire. He had forgotten what he might have said to this stranger under different circumstances. He looked keenly into Slone’s face and saw no fear, no subterfuge. The young man was honest.
“Bostil, I chased this wild horse days an’ weeks an’ months, hundreds of miles—across the cañon an’ the river—”
“No!” interrupted Bostil, blankly.
“Yes. I’ll tell you how later.… Out there somewhere I caught Wildfire, broke him as much as he’ll ever be broken. He played me out an’ got away. Your girl rode along—saved my horse—an’ saved my life, too. I was in bad shape for days. But I got well—an’—an’ then she wanted me to let her run Wildfire in the big race. I couldn’t refuse.… An’ it would have been a great race but for the unlucky accident to Sage King. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Slone, it jarred me some, thet disappointment. But it’s over,” replied Bostil. “An’ so thet’s how Lucy found her hoss. She sure was mysterious.… Wal, wal.” Bostil became aware of others behind him. “Holley, shake hands with Slone, hoss-wrangler out of Utah.… You, too, Cal Blinn.… An’ Macomber—an’ Wetherby, meet my friend here—young Slone.… An’, Cordts, shake hands with a feller thet owns a grand hoss!”
Bostil laughed as he introduced the horse-thief to Slone. The others laughed, too, even Cordts joining in. There was much of the old rider daredevil spirit left in Bostil, and it interested and amused him to see Cordts and Slone meet. Assuredly Slone had heard of the noted stealer of horses. The advantage was certainly on Cordts’s side, for he was good-natured and pleasant while Slone stiffened, paling slightly as he faced about to acknowledge the introduction.
“Howdy, Slone,” drawled Cordts, with hand outstretched. “I sure am glad to meet yuh. I’d like to trade the Sage King for this red stallion!”
A roar of laughter greeted this sally, all but Bostil and Slone joining in. The joke was on Bostil, and he showed it. Slone did not even smile.
“Howdy, Cordts,” he replied. “I’m glad to meet you—so I’ll know you when I see you again.”
“Wal, we’re all good fellers to-day,” interposed Bostil. “An’ now let’s ride home an’ eat. Slone, you come with me.”
The group slowly mounted the slope where the horses waited. Macomber, Weatherby, Burthwait, Blinn—all Bostil’s friends proffered their felicitations to the young rider, and all were evidently prepossessed with him.
The sun was low in the west; purple shades were blotting out the gold lights down the valley; the day of the great races was almost done. Indians were still scattered here and there in groups; others were turning out the mustangs; and the majority were riding and walking with the crowd toward the village.
Bostil observed that Cordts had hurried ahead of the group and now appeared to be saying something emphatic to Dick Sears and Hutchinson. Bostil heard Cordts curse. Probably he was arraigning the sullen Sears. Cordts had acted first rate—had lived up to his word, as Bostil thought he would do. Cordts and Hutchinson mounted their horses and rode off, somewhat to the left of the scattered crowd. But Sears remained behind. Bostil thought this strange and put it down to the surliness of the fellow, who had lost on the races. Bostil, wishing Sears would get out of his sight, resolved never to make another blunder like inviting horse-thieves to a race.
All the horses except Wildfire stood in a bunch back on the bench. Sears appeared to be fussing with the straps on his saddle. And Bostil could not keep his glance from wandering back to gloat over Wildfire’s savage grace and striking size.
Suddenly there came a halt in the conversation of the men, a curse in Holley’s deep voice, a violent split in the group. Bostil wheeled to see Sears in a menacing position with two guns leveled low.
“Don’t holler!” he called. “An’ don’t move!”
“What’n the hell now, Sears?” demanded Bostil.
“I’ll bore you if you move—thet’s what!” replied Sears. His eyes, bold, steely, with a glint that Bostil knew, vibrated as he held in sight all points before him. A vicious little sand-rattlesnake about to strike!
“Holley, turn yer back!” ordered Sears.
The old rider, who stood foremost of the group, instantly obeyed, with hands up. He took no chances here, for he alone packed a gun. With swift steps Sears moved, pulled Holley’s gun, flung it aside into the sage.
“Sears, it ain’t a hold-up!” expostulated Bostil. The act seemed too bold, too wild even for Dick Sears.
“Ain’t it?” scoffed Sears, malignantly. “Bostil, I was after the King. But I reckon I’ll git the hoss thet beat him!”
Bostil’s face turned dark-blood color and his neck swelled. “By Gawd, Sears! You ain’t a-goin’ to steal this boy’s hoss!”
“Shut up!” hissed the horse-thief. He pushed a gun close to Bostil. “I’ve always laid fer you! I’m achin’ to bore you now. I would but fer scarin’ this hoss. If you yap again I’ll kill you, anyhow, an’ take a chance!”
All the terrible hate and evil and cruelty and deadliness of his kind burned in his eyes and stung in his voice.
“Sears, if it’s my horse you want you needn’t kill Bostil,” spoke up Slone. The contrast of his cool, quiet voice cased the terrible strain.
“Lead him round hyar!” snapped Sears.
Wildfire appeared more shy of the horses back of him than of the men. Slone was able to lead him, however, to within several paces of Sears. Then Slone dropped the reins. He still held a lasso which was loosely coiled, and the loop dropped in front of him as he backed away.
Sears sheathed the left-hand gun. Keeping the group covered with the other, he moved backward, reaching for the hanging reins. Wildfire snorted, appeared about to jump. But Sears got the reins. Bostil, standing like a stone, his companions also motionless, could not help but admire the daring of this upland horse-thief. How was he to mount that wild stallion? Sears was noted for two qualities—his nerve before men and his skill with horses. Assuredly he would not risk an ordinary mount. Wildfire began to suspect Sears—to look at him instead of the other horses. Then quick as a cat Sears vaulted into the saddle. Wildfire snorted and lifted his forefeet in a lunge that meant he would bolt.
Sears in vaulting up had swung the gun aloft. He swept it down, but waveringly, for Wildfire had begun to rear.
Bostil saw how fatal that single instant would have been for Sears if he or Holley had a gun.
Something whistled. Bostil saw the leap of Slone’s lasso—the curling, snaky dart of the noose which flew up to snap arou
nd Sears. The rope sung taut. Sears was swept bodily clean from the saddle, to hit the ground in sodden impact.
Almost swifter than Bostil’s sight was the action of Slone—flashing by—in the air—himself on the plunging horse. Sears shot once, twice. Then Wildfire bolted as his rider whipped the lasso round the horn. Sears, half rising, was jerked ten feet. An awful shriek was throttled in his throat.
A streak of dust on the slope—a tearing, parting line in the sage!
Bostil stood amazed. The red stallion made short plunges. Slone reached low for the tripping reins. When he straightened up in the saddle Wildfire broke wildly into a run.
It was characteristic of Holley that at this thrilling, tragic instant he walked over into the sage to pick up his gun.
“Throwed a gun on me, got the drop, an’ pitched mine away!” muttered Holley, in disgust. The way he spoke meant that he was disgraced.
“My Gawd! I was scared thet Sears would get the hoss!” rolled out Bostil.
Holley thought of his gun; Bostil thought of the splendid horse. The thoughts were characteristic of these riders. The other men, however, recovering from a horror-broken silence, burst out in acclaim of Slone’s feat.
“Dick Sears’s finish! Roped by a boy rider!” exclaimed Cal Blinn, fervidly.
“Bostil, that rider is worthy of his horse,” said Wetherby. “I think Sears would have bored you. I saw his finger pressing—pressing on the trigger. Men like Sears can’t help but pull at that stage.”
“Thet was the quickest trick I ever seen,” declared Macomber.
They watched Wildfire run down the slope, out into the valley, with a streak of rising dust out behind. They all saw when there ceased to be that peculiar rising of dust. Wildfire appeared to shoot ahead at greater speed. Then he slowed up. The rider turned him and faced back toward the group, coming at a stiff gallop. Soon Wildfire breasted the slope, and halted, snorting, shaking before the men. The lasso was still trailing out behind, limp and sagging. There was no weight upon it now.
Bostil strode slowly ahead. He sympathized with the tension that held Slone; he knew why the rider’s face was gray, why his lips only moved mutely, why there was horror in the dark, strained eyes, why the lean, strong hands, slowly taking up the lasso, now shook like leaves in the wind.
There was only dust on the lasso. But Bostil knew—they all knew that nonetheless it had dealt a terrible death to the horse-thief.
Somehow Bostil could not find words for what he wanted to say. He put a hand on the red stallion—patted his shoulder. Then he gripped Slone close and hard. He was thinking how he would have gloried in a son like this young, wild rider. Then he again faced his comrades.
“Fellers, do you think Cordts was in on thet trick?” he queried.
“Nope. Cordts was on the square,” replied Holley. “But he must have seen it comin’ an’ left Sears to his fate. It sure was a fittin’ last ride for a hoss-thief.”
* * *
Bostil sent Holley and Farlane on ahead to find Cordts and Hutchinson, with their comrades, to tell them the fate of Sears, and to warn them to leave before the news got to the riders.
The sun was setting golden and red over the broken battlements of the cañons to the west. The heat of the day blew away on a breeze that bent the tips of the sage-brush. A wild song drifted back from the riders to the fore. And the procession of Indians moved along, their gay trappings and bright colors beautiful in the fading sunset light.
When Bostil and his guests arrived at the corrals, Holley, with Farlane and other riders, were waiting.
“Boss,” said Holley, “Cordts an’ his outfit never rid in. They was last seen by some Navajos headin’ for the cañons.”
“Thet’s good!” ejaculated Bostil, in relief. “Wal, boys, look after the hosses.… Slone, just turn Wildfire over to the boys with instructions, an’ feel safe.”
Farlane scratched his head and looked dubious. “I’m wonderin’ how safe it’ll be fer us.”
“I’ll look after him,” said Slone.
Bostil nodded as if he had expected Slone to refuse to let any rider put the stallion away for the night. Wildfire would not go into the barn, and Slone led him into one of the high-barred corrals. Bostil waited, talking with his friends, until Slone returned, and then they went toward the house.
“I reckon we couldn’t get inside Brack’s place now,” remarked Bostil. “But in a case like this I can scare up a drink.” Lights from the windows shone bright through the darkness under the cottonwoods. Bostil halted at the door, as if suddenly remembering, and he whispered, huskily: “Let’s keep the women from learnin’ about Sears—to-night, anyway.”
Then he led the way through the big door into the huge living-room. There were hanging-lights on the walls and blazing sticks on the hearth. Lucy came running in to meet them. It did not escape Bostil’s keen eyes that she was dressed in her best white dress. He had never seen her look so sweet and pretty, and, for that matter, so strange. The flush, the darkness of her eyes, the added something in her face, tender, thoughtful, strong—these were new. Bostil pondered while she welcomed his guests. Slone, who had hung back, was last in turn. Lucy greeted him as she had the others. Slone met her with awkward constraint. The gray had not left his face. Lucy looked up at him again, and differently.
“What—what has happened?” she asked.
It annoyed Bostil that Slone and all the men suddenly looked blank.
“Why, nothin’,” replied Slone, slowly, “’cept I’m fagged out.”
Lucy, or any other girl, could have seen that he was evading the truth. She flashed a look from Slone to her father.
“Until to-day we never had a big race that something dreadful didn’t happen,” said Lucy. “This was my day—my race. And, oh! I wanted it to pass without—without—”
“Wal, Lucy dear,” replied Bostil, as she faltered. “Nothin’ came off thet’d make you feel bad. Young Slone had a scare about his hoss. Wildfire’s safe out there in the corral, an’ he’ll be guarded like the King an’ Sarch. Slone needs a drink an’ somethin’ to eat, same as all of us.”
Lucy’s color returned and her smile, but Bostil noted that, while she was serving them and brightly responsive to compliments, she gave more than one steady glance at Slone. She was deep, thought Bostil, and it angered him a little that she showed interest in what concerned this strange rider.
Then they had dinner, with twelve at table. The wives of Bostil’s three friends had been helping Aunt Jane prepare the feast, and they added to the merriment. Bostil was not much given to social intercourse—he would have preferred to be with his horses and riders—but this night he outdid himself as host, amazed his sister Jane, who evidently thought he drank too much, and delighted Lucy. Bostil’s outward appearance and his speech and action never reflected all the workings of his mind. No one would ever know the depth of his bitter disappointment at the outcome of the race. With Creech’s Blue Roan out of the way, another horse, swifter and more dangerous, had come along to spoil the King’s chance. Bostil felt a subtly increasing covetousness in regard to Wildfire, and this colored all his talk and action. The upland country, vast and rangy, was for Bostil too small to hold Sage King and Wildfire unless they both belonged to him. And when old Cal Blinn gave a ringing toast to Lucy, hoping to live to see her up on Wildfire in the grand race that must be run with the King, Bostil felt stir in him the birth of a subtle, bitter fear. At first he mocked it. He—Bostil—afraid to race! It was a lie of the excited mind. He repudiated it. Insidiously it returned. He drowned it down—smothered it with passion. Then the ghost of it remained, hauntingly.
After dinner Bostil with the men went down to Brackton’s, where Slone and the winners of the day received their prizes.
“Why, it’s more money than I ever had in my whole life!” exclaimed Slone, gazing incredulously at the gold.
Bostil was amused and pleased, and back of both amusement and pleasure was the old inventive, driving passion to
gain his own ends.
Bostil was abnormally generous in many ways; monstrously selfish in one way.
“Slone, I seen you didn’t drink none,” he said, curiously.
“No; I don’t like liquor.”
“Do you gamble?”
“I like a little bet—on a race,” replied Slone, frankly.
“Wal, thet ain’t gamblin’. These fool riders of mine will bet on the switchin’ of a hoss’s tail.” He drew Slone a little aside from the others, who were interested in Brackton’s delivery of the different prizes. “Slone, how’d you like to ride for me?”
Slone appeared surprised. “Why, I never rode for anyone,” he replied, slowly. “I can’t stand to be tied down. I’m a horse-hunter, you know.”
Bostil eyed the young man, wondering what he knew about the difficulties of the job offered. It was no news to Bostil that he was at once the best and the worst man to ride for in all the uplands.
“Sure, I know. But thet doesn’t make no difference,” went on Bostil, persuasively. “If we got along—wal, you’d save some of thet yellow coin you’re jinglin’. A roamin’ rider never builds no corral!”