Wildfire and the Heritage of the Desert (33 page)

Next day Creech climbed out of that low-walled cañon, and Lucy saw a wild, rocky country cut by gorges, green and bare, or yellow and cedared. The long, black-fringed line she had noticed the day before loomed closer, overhanging this crisscrossed region of cañons. Every half-hour Creech would lead them downward and presently climb out again. There were sand and hard ground and thick turf and acres and acres of bare rock where even a shod horse would not leave a track.

But the going was not so hard—there was not so much travel on foot for Lucy—and she finished that day in better condition than the first one.

Next day Creech proceeded with care and caution. Many times he left the direct route, bidding Lucy wait for him, and he would ride to the rims of cañons or the tops of ridges of cedar forests, and from these vantage-points he would survey the country. Lucy gathered after a while that he was apprehensive of what might be encountered, and particularly so of what might be feared in pursuit. Lucy thought this strange, because it was out of the question for anyone to be so soon on Creech's trail.

These peculiar actions of Creech were more noticeable on the third day, and Lucy grew apprehensive herself. She could not divine why. But when Creech halted on a high crest that gave a sweeping vision of the broken table-land they had traversed Lucy made out for herself faint moving specks miles behind.

“I reckon you see thet,” said Creech.

“Horses,” replied Lucy.

He nodded his head gloomily, and seemed pondering a serious question.

“Is someone trailing us?” asked Lucy, and she could not keep the tremor out of her voice.

“Wal, I should smile! Fer two days—an' it sure beats me. They've never had a sight of us. But they keep comin'.”

“They! Who?” she asked, swiftly.

“I hate to tell you, but I reckon I ought. Thet's Cordts an' two of his gang.”

“Oh—don't tell me so!” cried Lucy, suddenly terrified. Mention of Cordts had not always had power to frighten her, but this time she had a return of that shaking fear which had overcome her in the grove the night she was captured.

“Cordts all right,” replied Creech. “I knowed thet before I seen him. Fer two mornin's back I seen his hoss grazin' in thet wide cañon. But I thought I'd slipped by. Someone seen us. Or they seen our trail. Anyway, he's after us. What beats me is how he sticks to thet trail. Cordts never was no tracker. An' since Dick Sears is dead there ain't a tracker in Cordts's outfit. An' I always could hide my tracks.… Beats me!”

“Creech, I've been leaving a trail,” confessed Lucy.

“What!”

Then she told him how she had been dropping cedar berries and bits of cedar leaves along the bare and stony course they had traversed.

“Wal, I'm—” Creech stifled an oath. Then he laughed, but gruffly. “You air a cute one. But I reckon you didn't promise not to do thet.… An' now if Cordts gits you there'll be only yourself to blame.”

“Oh!” cried Lucy, frantically looking back. The moving specks were plainly in sight. “How can he know he's trailing me?”

“Thet I can't say. Mebbe he doesn't know. His hosses air fresh, though, an' if I can't shake him he'll find out soon enough who he's trailin'.”

“Go on! We must shake him. I'll never do
that
again!… For God's sake, Creech, don't let him get me!”

And Creech led down off the high open land into cañons again.

The day ended, and the night seemed a black blank to Lucy. Another sunrise found Creech leading on, sparing neither Lucy nor the horses. He kept on a steady walk or trot, and he picked out ground less likely to leave any tracks. Like an old deer he doubled on his trail. He traveled down stream-beds where the water left no trail. That day the mustangs began to fail. The others were wearing out.

The cañons ran like the ribs of a wash-board. And they grew deep and verdant, with looming, towered walls. That night Lucy felt lost in an abyss. The dreaming silence kept her awake many moments while sleep had already seized upon her eyelids. And then she dreamed of Cordts capturing her, of carrying her miles deeper into these wild and purple cliffs, of Slone in pursuit on the stallion Wildfire, and of a savage fight. And she awoke terrified and cold in the blackness of the night.

On the next day Creech traveled west. This seemed to Lucy to be far to the left of the direction taken before. And Lucy, in spite of her utter weariness, and the necessity of caring for herself and her horse, could not but wonder at the wild and frowning cañon. It was only a tributary of the great cañon, she supposed, but it was different, strange, impressive, yet intimate, because all about it was overpowering, near at hand, even the beetling crags. And at every turn it seemed impossible to go farther over that narrow and rock-bestrewn floor. Yet Creech found a way on.

Then came hours of climbing such slopes and benches and ledges as Lucy had not yet encountered. The grasping spikes of dead cedar tore her dress to shreds, and many a scratch burned her flesh. About the middle of the afternoon Creech led up over the last declivity, a yellow slope of cedar, to a flat, upland covered with pine and high bleached grass. They rested.

“We've fooled Cordts, you can be sure of thet,” said Creech. “You're a game kid, an', by Gawd! if I had this job to do over I'd never tackle it again!”

“Oh, you're sure we've lost him!” implored Lucy.

“Sure as I am of death. An' we'll make surer in crossin' this bench. It's miles to the other side where I'm to keep watch fer Joel. An' we won't leave a track all the way.”

“But this grass?” questioned Lucy. “It'll show our tracks.”

“Look at the lanes an' trails between. All pine mats thick an' soft an' springy. Only an Indian could follow us hyar on Wild Hoss Bench.”

Lucy gazed before her under the pines. It was a beautiful forest, with trees standing far apart, yet not so far but that their foliage intermingled. A dry fragrance, thick as a heavy perfume, blew into her face. She could not help but think of fire—how it would race through here, and that recalled Joel Creech's horrible threat. Lucy shuddered and put away the memory.

“I can't go—any farther—to-day,” she said.

Creech looked at her compassionately. Then Lucy became conscious that of late he had softened.

“You'll have to come,” he said. “There's no water on this side, short of thet cañon-bed. An' acrost there's water close under the wall.”

So they set out into the forest. And Lucy found that after all she could go on. The horses walked and on the soft, springy ground did not jar her. Deer and wild turkey abounded there and showed little alarm at sight of the travelers. And before long Lucy felt that she would become intoxicated by the dry odor. It was so strong, so thick, so penetrating. Yet, though she felt she would reel under its influence, it revived her.

The afternoon passed; the sun set off through the pines, a black-streaked, golden flare; twilight shortly changed to night. The trees looked spectral in the gloom, and the forest appeared to grow thicker. Wolves murmured, and there were wild cries of cat and owl. Lucy fell asleep on her horse. At last, sometime late in the night, when Creech lifted her from the saddle and laid her down, she stretched out on the soft mat of pine needles and knew no more.

*   *   *

She did not awaken until the afternoon of the next day.

The site where Creech had made his final camp overlooked the wildest of all that wild upland country. The pines had scattered and trooped around a beautiful park of grass that ended abruptly upon bare rock. Yellow crags towered above the rim, and under them a yawning narrow gorge, overshadowed from above, blue in its depths, split the end of the great plateau and opened out sheer into the head of the cañon, which, according to Creech, stretched away through that wilderness of red stone and green clefts. When Lucy's fascinated gaze looked afar she was stunned at the vast, billowy, bare surfaces. Every green cleft was a short cañon running parallel with this central and longer one. The dips and breaks showed how all these cañons were connected. They led the gaze away, descending gradually to the dim purple of distance—the bare, rolling desert upland.

Lucy did nothing but gaze. She was unable to walk or eat that day. Creech hung around her with a remorse he apparently felt, yet could not put into words.

“Do you expect Joel to come up this big cañon?”

“I reckon I do—some day,” replied Creech. “An' I wish he'd hurry.”

“Does he know the way?”

“Nope. But he's good at findin' places. An' I told him to stick to the main cañon. Would you believe you could ride off er this rim, straight down thar fer fifty miles, an' never git off your hoss?”

“No, I wouldn't believe it possible.”

“Wal, it's so. I've done it. An' I didn't want to come up thet way because I'd had to leave tracks.”

“Do you think we're safe—from Cordts now?” she asked.

“I reckon so. He's no tracker.”

“But suppose he
does
trail us?”

“Wal, I reckon I've a shade the best of Cordts at gunplay, any day.”

Lucy regarded the man in surprise. “Oh, it's so—strange!” she said. “You'd fight for me. Yet you dragged me for days over these awful rocks!… Look at me, Creech. Do I look much like Lucy Bostil?”

Creech hung his head. “Wal, I reckoned I wasn't a blackguard, but I
am.”

“You used to care for me when I was little. I remember how I used to take rides on your knee.”

“Lucy, I never thought of thet when I ketched you. You was only a means to an end. Bostil hated me. He ruined me. I give up to revenge. An' I could only git thet through you.”

“Creech, I'm not defending Dad. He's—he's no good where horses are concerned. I know he wronged you. Then why didn't you wait and meet him like a man instead of dragging me to this misery?”

“Wall, I never thought of thet, either. I wished I had.” He grew gloomier then and relapsed into silent watching.

*   *   *

Lucy felt better next day, and offered to help Creech at the few camp duties. He would not let her. There was nothing to do but rest and wait, and the idleness appeared to be harder on Creech than on Lucy. He had always been exceedingly active. Lucy divined that every hour his remorse grew keener, and she did all she could think of to make it so. Creech made her a rude brush by gathering small roots and binding them tightly and cutting the ends square. And Lucy, after the manner of an Indian, got the tangles out of her hair. That day Creech seemed to want to hear Lucy's voice, and so they often fell into conversation. Once he said, thoughtfully:

“I'm tryin' to remember somethin' I heerd at the Ford. I meant to ask you—” Suddenly he turned to her with animation. He who had been so gloomy and lusterless and dead showed a bright eagerness. “I heerd you beat the King on a red hoss—a wild hoss!… Thet must have been a joke—like one of Joel's.”

“No. It's true. An' Dad nearly had a fit!”

“Wal!” Creech simply blazed with excitement. “I ain't wonderin' if he did. His own girl! Lucy, come to remember, you always said you'd beat thet gray racer.… Fer the Lord's sake tell me all about it.”

Lucy warmed to him because, broken as he was, he could be genuinely glad some horse but his own had won a race. Bostil could never have been like that. So Lucy told him about the race—and then she had to tell about Wildfire, and then about Slone. But at first all of Creech's interest centered round Wildfire and the race that had not really been run. He asked a hundred questions. He was as pleased as a boy listening to a good story. He praised Lucy again and again. He crowed over Bostil's discomfiture. And when Lucy told him that Slone had dared her father to race, had offered to bet Wildfire and his own life against her hand, then Creech was beside himself.

“This hyar Slone—he
called
Bostil's hand!”

“He's a wild-horse hunter. And
he
can trail us!”

“Trail us! Slone?… Say, Lucy, are you in love with him?”

Lucy uttered a strange little broken sound, half laugh, half sob. “Love him! Ah!”

“An' your Dad's ag'in him! Sure Bostil'll hate any rider with a fast hoss. Why didn't the darn fool sell his stallion to your father?”

“He gave Wildfire to me.”

“I'd have done the same. Wal, now, when you git back home what's comin' of it all?”

Lucy shook her head sorrowfully. “God only knows. Dad will never own Wildfire, and he'll never let me marry Slone. And when you take the King away from him to ransom me—then my life will be hell, for if Dad sacrifices Sage King, afterward he'll hate me as the cause of his loss.”

“I can sure see the sense of all that,” replied Creech, soberly. And he pondered.

Lucy saw through this man as if he had been an inch of crystal water. He was no villain, and just now in his simplicity, in his plodding thought of sympathy for her he was lovable.

“It's one hell of a muss, if you'll excuse my talk,” said Creech. “An' I don't like the looks of what I 'pear to be throwin' in your way.… But see hyar, Lucy, if Bostil didn't give up—or, say, he gits the King back, thet wouldn't make your chance with Slone any brighter.”

“I don't know.”

“Thet race will have to be run!”

“What good will that do?” cried Lucy, with tears in her eyes. “I don't want to lose Dad. I—I—love him—mean as he is. And it'll kill me to lose Lin. Because Wildfire can beat Sage King, and that means Dad will be forever against him.”

“Couldn't this wild-horse feller
let
the King win thet race?”

“Oh, he could, but he wouldn't.”

“Can't you be sweet round him—fetch him over to thet?”