第72章

"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 saw, 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 Lucy Bostil! I seen you with her out there in the rocks the mornin' of the race.I seen what you did to her.An' I'm a-goin' to tell it!...An' I'm a-goin' to ketch Lucy Bostil an' strip her naked, an' when I git through with her I'll tie her on a hoss an' fire the grass! By Gawd! I am!" Livid and wild, he breathed hard as he got up, facing Slone malignantly.

"Crazy or not, here goes!" muttered Slone, grimly; and, leaping up, with one blow he knocked Creech half out of the door, and then kicked him the rest of the way."Go on and have a fit!" cried Slone."I'm liable to kill you if you don't have one!"Creech got up and ran down the path, turning twice on the way.Then he disappeared among the trees.

Slone sat down."Lost my temper again!" he said."This has been a day.Guess I'd better cool off right now an' stay here....That poor devil! Maybe he's not so crazy.But he's wilder than an Indian.I must warn Lucy....Lord! Iwonder if Bostil could have held back repairin' that boat, an' then cut it loose? I wonder? Yesterday I'd have sworn never.To-day--"Slone drove the conclusion of that thought out of his consciousness before he wholly admitted it.Then he set to work cutting the long grass from the wet and shady nooks under the bluff where the spring made the ground rich.He carried an armful down to the corral.Nagger was roaming around outside, picking grass for himself.Wildfire snorted as always when he saw Slone, and Slone as always, when time permitted, tried to coax the stallion to him.He had never succeeded, nor did he this time.When he left the bundle of grass on the ground and went outside Wildfire readily came for it.

"You're that tame, anyhow, you hungry red devil," said Slone, jealously.