Wildfire (1999)

by Grey, Zane

  "I'm pretty hungry myself," she said. "But I don't suppose I know what hunger is."

  "After a while a fellow loses the feelin' of hunger," he replied. "I reckon it'll come back quick. . . . This all looks good."

  So they began to eat. Lucy's excitement, her sense of the unreality of this adventure, in no wise impaired her appetite. She seemed acutely sensitive to the perceptions of the moment. The shade of the cedars was cool. And out on the desert she could see the dark smoky veils of heat lifting. The breeze carried a dry odor of sand and grass. She heard bees humming by. And all around the great isolated monuments stood up, red tops against the blue sky. It was a silent, dreaming, impressive place, where she felt unlike herself.

  "I mustn't stay long," she said, suddenly remembering.

  "Will you come back--again?" he asked.

  The question startled Lucy. "Why--I--I don't know. . . . Won't you ride in to the Ford just as soon as you're able?"

  "I reckon not."

  "But it's the only place where there's people in hundreds of miles. Surely you won't try to go back the way you came?"

  "When Wildfire left that country I left it. We can't back."

  "Then you've no people--no one you care for?" she asked, in sweet seriousness.

  "There's no one. I'm an orphan. My people were lost in an Indian massacre--with a wagon-train crossin' Wyomin'. A few escaped, an' I was one of the youngsters. I had a tough time, like a stray dog, till I grew up. An' then I took to the desert."

  "Oh, I see. I--I'm sorry," replied Lucy. "But that's not very different from my dad's story, of his early years. . . . What will you do now?"

  "I'll stay here till my back straightens out. . . . Will you ride out again?"

  "Yes," replied Lucy, without looking at him; and she wondered if it were really she who was speaking.

  Then he asked her about the Ford, and Bostil, and the ranches and villages north, and the riders and horses. Lucy told him everything she knew and could think of, and, lastly, after waxing eloquent on the horses of the uplands, particularly Bostil's, she gave him a graphic account of Cordts and Dick Sears.

  "Horse-thieves!" exclaimed the rider, darkly. There was a grimness as well as fear in his tone. "I've heard of Sears, but not Cordts. Where does this band hang out?"

  "No one knows. Holley says they hide up in the canyon country. None of the riders have ever tried to track them far. It would be useless. Holley says there are plateaus of rich grass and great forests. The Ute Indians say that much, too. But we know little about the wild country."

  "Aren't there any hunters at Bostil's Ford?"

  "Wild-horse hunters, you mean?"

  "No. Bear an' deer hunters."

  "There's none. And I suppose that's why we're not familiar with the wild canyon country. I'd like to ride in there sometime and camp. But our people don't go in for that. They love the open ranges. No one I know, except a half-witted boy, ever rode down among these monuments. And how wonderful a place! It can't be more than twenty miles from home. . . . I must be going soon. I'm forgetting Sage King. Did I tell you I was training him for the races?"

  "No, you didn't. What races? Tell me," he replied, with keen interest.

  Then Lucy told him about the great passion of her father--about the long, time-honored custom of free-for-all races, and the great races that had been run in the past; about the Creeches and their swift horses; about the rivalry and speculation and betting; and lastly about the races to be run in a few weeks--races so wonderful in prospect that even the horse-thief, Cordts, had begged to be allowed to attend.

  "I'm going to see the King beat Creech's roan," shouted the rider, with red in his cheeks and a flash in his eye.

  His enthusiasm warmed Lucy's interest, yet it made her thoughtful. Ideas flashed into her mind. If the rider attended the races he would have that fleet stallion with him. He could not be separated from the horse that had cost him so dearly. What would Bostil and Holley and Farlane say at sight of Wildfire? Suppose Wildfire was to enter the races! It was probable that he could run away from the whole field--even beat the King. Lucy thrilled and thrilled. What a surprise it would be! She had the rider's true love of seeing the unheralded horse win over the favorite. She had for years wanted to see a horse--and ride a horse--out in front of Sage King. Then suddenly all these flashing ideas coruscated seemingly into a gleam-- a leaping, radiant, wonderful thought. Irresistibly it burst from her.

  "Let ME ride your Wildfire in the great race?" she cried, breathlessly.

  His response was instantaneous--a smile that was keen and sweet and strong, and a proffered hand. Impulsively Lucy clasped that hand with both hers.

  "You don't mean it," she said. "Oh, it's what Auntie would call one of my wild dreams! . . . And I'm growing up--they say. . . . But-- Oh, if I could ride Wildfire against the field in that race. . . . If I ONLY COULD!"

  She was on fire with the hope, flushing, tingling. She was unconscious of her effect upon the rider, who gazed at her with a new-born light in his eyes.

  "You can ride him. I reckon I'd like to see that race just as much as Bostil or Cordts or any man. . . . An' see here, girl, Wildfire can beat this gray racer of your father's."

  "Oh!" cried Lucy.

  "Wildfire can beat the King," repeated the rider, intensely. "The tame horse doesn't step on this earth that can run with Wildfire. He's a stallion. He has been a killer of horses. It's in him to KILL. If he ran a race it would be that instinct in him."

  "How can we plan it?" went on Lucy, impulsively. She had forgotten to withdraw her hands from his. "It must be a surprise--a complete surprise. If you came to the Ford we couldn't keep it secret. And Dad or Farlane would prevent me, somehow."

  "It's easy. Ride out here as often as you can. Bring a light saddle an' let me put you up on Wildfire. You'll run him, train him, get him in shape. Then the day of the races or the night before I'll go in an' hide out in the sage till you come or send for Wildfire."

  "Oh, it'll be glorious," she cried, with eyes like stars. "I know just where to have you hide. A pile of rocks near the racecourse. There's a spring and good grass. I could ride out to you just before the big race, and we'd come back, with me on Wildfire. The crowd always stays down at the end of the racecourse. Only the starters stay out there. . . . Oh, I can see Bostil when that red stallion runs into sight!"

  "Well, is it settled?" queried the rider, strangely.

  Lucy was startled into self-consciousness by his tone.

  How strangely he must have felt. And his eyes were piercing.

  "You mean--that I ride Wildfire?" she replied, shyly. "Yes, if you'll let me."

  "I'll be proud."

  "You're very good. . . . And do you think Wildfire can beat the King?"

  "I know it."

  "How do you?"

  "I've seen both horses."

  "But it will be a grand race."

  "I reckon so. It's likely to be the grandest ever seen. But Wildfire will win because he's run wild all his life--an' run to kill other horses. . . . The only question is--CAN you ride him?"

  "Yes. I never saw the horse I couldn't ride. Bostil says there are some I can't ride. Farlane says not. Only two horses have thrown me, the King and Sarchedon. But that was before they knew me. And I was sort of wild. I can make your Wildfire love me."

  "THAT'S the last part of it I'd ever doubt," replied the rider. "It's settled, then. I'll camp here. I'll be well in a few days. Then I'll take Wildfire in hand. You will ride out whenever you have a chance, without bein' seen. An' the two of us will train the stallion to upset that race."

  "Yes--then--it's settled."

  Lucy's gaze was impelled and held by the rider's. Why was he so pale? But then he had been injured--weakened. This compact between them had somehow changed their relation. She seemed to have known him long.

  "What's your name?" she asked.

  "Lin Slone," replied the rider.

  Then she released her hands. "I must ride in now. If this isn
't a dream I'll come back soon." She led Sage King to a rock and mounted him.

  "It's good to see you up there," said Slone. "An' that splendid horse! . . . He knows what he is. It'll break Bostil's heart to see that horse beat."

  "Dad'll feel bad, but it'll do him good," replied Lucy.

  That was the old rider's ruthless spirit speaking out of his daughter's lips.

  Slone went close to the King and, putting a hand on the pommel, he looked up at Lucy. "Maybe--it is--a dream--an' you won't come back," he said, with unsteady voice.

  "Then I'll come in dreams," she flashed. "Be careful of yourself. . . . Good-by."

  And at a touch the impatient King was off. From far up the slope near a monument Lucy looked back. Slone was watching her. She waved a gauntleted hand--and then looked back no more.

  CHAPTER X

  Two weeks slipped by on the wings of time and opportunity and achievement, all colored so wonderfully for Lucy, all spelling that adventure for which she had yearned.

  Lucy was riding down into the sage toward the monuments with a whole day before her. Bostil kept more and more to himself, a circumstance that worried her, though she thought little about it. Van had taken up the training of the King; and Lucy had deliberately quarreled with him so that she would be free to ride where she listed. Farlane nagged her occasionally about her rides into the sage, insisting that she must not go so far and stay so long. And after Van's return to work he made her ride Sarchedon.

  Things had happened at the Ford which would have concerned Lucy greatly had she not been over-excited about her own affairs. Some one had ambushed Bostil in the cottonwoods near his house and had shot at him, narrowly missing him. Bostil had sworn he recognized the shot as having come from a rifle, and that he knew to whom it belonged. The riders did not believe this, and said some boy, shooting at a rabbit or coyote, had been afraid to confess he had nearly hit Bostil. The riders all said Bostil was not wholly himself of late. The river was still low. The boat had not been repaired. And Creech's horses were still on the other side.

  These things concerned Lucy, yet they only came and went swiftly through her mind. She was obsessed by things intimately concerning herself.

  "Oh, I oughtn't to go," she said, aloud. But she did not even check Sarchedon's long swing, his rocking-chair lope. She had said a hundred times that she ought not go again out to the monuments. For Lin Slone had fallen despairingly, terribly in love with her.

  It was not this, she averred, but the monuments and the beautiful Wildfire that had woven a spell round her she could not break. She had ridden Wildfire all through that strange region of monuments and now they claimed something of her. Just as wonderful was Wildfire's love for her. The great stallion hated Slone and loved Lucy. Of all the remarkable circumstances she had seen or heard about a horse, this fact was the most striking. She could do anything with him. All that savageness and wildness disappeared when she approached him. He came at her call. He whistled at sight of her. He sent out a ringing blast of disapproval when she rode away. Every day he tried to bite or kick Slone, but he was meek under Lucy's touch.

  But this morning there came to Lucy the first vague doubt of herself. Once entering her mind, that doubt became clear. And then she vowed she liked Slone as she might a brother. And something within her accused her own conviction. The conviction was her real self, and the accusation was some other girl lately born in her. Lucy did not like this new person. She was afraid of her. She would not think of her unless she had to.

  "I never cared for him--that way," she said, aloud. "I don't--I couldn't--ever--I--I--love Lin Slone!"

  The spoken thought--the sound of the words played havoc with Lucy's self-conscious calmness. She burned. She trembled. She was in a rage with herself. She spurred Sarchedon into a run and tore through the sage, down into the valley, running him harder than she should have run him. Then she checked him, and, penitent, petted him out of all proportion to her thoughtlessness. The violent exercise only heated her blood and, if anything, increased this sudden and new torment. Why had she discarded her boy's rider outfit and chaps for a riding-habit made by her aunt, and one she had scorned to wear? Some awful, accusing voice thundered in Lucy's burning ears that she had done this because she was ashamed to face Lin Slone any more in that costume--she wanted to appear different in his eyes, to look like a girl. If that shameful suspicion was a fact why was it---what did it mean? She could not tell, yet she was afraid of the truth.

  All of a sudden Lin Slone stood out clearer in her mental vision-- the finest type of a rider she had ever known--a strong, lithe, magnificent horseman, whose gentleness showed his love for horses, whose roughness showed his power--a strange, intense, lonely man in whom she had brought out pride, gratitude, kindness, passion, and despair. She felt her heart swell at the realization that she had changed him, made him kinder, made him divide his love as did her father, made him human, hopeful, longing for a future unfettered by the toils of desert allurement. She could not control her pride. She must like him very much. She confessed that, honestly, without a qualm. It was only bewildering moments of strange agitation and uncertainty that bothered her. She had refused to be concerned by them until they had finally impinged upon her peace of mind. Then they accused her; now she accused herself. She ought not go to meet Lin Slone any more.

  "But then--the race!" she murmured. "I couldn't give that up. . . . And oh! I'm afraid the harm is done! What can I do?"

  After the race--what then? To be sure, all of Bostil's Ford would know she had been meeting Slone out in the sage, training his horse. What would people say?

  "Dad will simply be radiant, IF he can buy Wildfire--and a fiend if he can't," she muttered.

  Lucy saw that her own impulsiveness had amounted to daring. She had gone too far. She excused that--for she had a rider's blood--she was Bostil's girl. But she had, in her wildness and joy and spirit, spent many hours alone with a rider, to his undoing. She could not excuse that. She was ashamed. What would he say when she told him she could see him no more? The thought made her weak. He would accept and go his way--back to that lonely desert, with only a horse.

  "Wildfire doesn't love him!" she said.

  And the scarlet fired her neck and cheek and temple. That leap of blood seemed to release a riot of emotions. What had been a torment became a torture. She turned Sarchedon homeward, but scarcely had faced that way when she wheeled him again. She rode slowly and she rode swiftly. The former was hateful because it held her back--from what she no longer dared think; the latter was fearful because it hurried her on swiftly, irresistibly to her fate.

  Lin Slone had changed his camp and had chosen a pass high up where the great walls had began to break into sections. Here there was intimacy with the sheer cliffs of red and yellow. Wide avenues between the walls opened on all points of the compass, and that one to the north appeared to be a gateway down into the valley of monuments. The monuments trooped down into the valley to spread out and grow isolated in the distance. Slone's camp was in a clump of cedars surrounding a spring. There was grass and white sage where rabbits darted in and out.

  Lucy did not approach this camp from that roundabout trail which she had made upon the first occasion of her visiting Slone. He had found an opening in the wall, and by riding this way into the pass Lucy cut off miles. In fact, the camp was not over fifteen miles from Bostil's Ford. It was so close that Lucy was worried lest some horse-tracker should stumble on the trail and follow her up into the pass.

  This morning she espied Slone at his outlook on a high rock that had fallen from the great walls. She always looked to see if he was there, and she always saw him. The days she had not come, which were few, he had spent watching for her there. His tasks were not many, and he said he had nothing to do but wait for her. Lucy had a persistent and remorseful, yet sweet memory of Slone at his lonely lookout. Here was a fine, strong, splendid young man who had nothing to do but watch for her--a waste of precious hours!

  She wave
d her hand from afar, and he waved in reply. Then as she reached the cedared part of the pass Slone was no longer visible. She put Sarchedon to a run up the hard, wind-swept sand, and reached the camp before Slone had climbed down from his perch.

  Lucy dismounted reluctantly. What would he say about the riding-habit that she wore? She felt very curious to learn, and shyer than ever before, and altogether different. The skirt made her more of a girl, it seemed.

  "Hello, Lin! " she called. There was nothing in her usual greeting to betray the state of her mind.

  "Good mornin'--Lucy," he replied, very slowly. He was looking at her, she thought, with different eyes. And he seemed changed, too, though he had long been well, and his tall, lithe rider's form, his lean, strong face, and his dark eyes were admirable in her sight. Only this morning, all because she had worn a girl's riding-skirt instead of boy's chaps, everything seemed different. Perhaps her aunt had been right, after all, and now things were natural.

  Slone gazed so long at her that Lucy could not keep silent. She laughed.

  "How do you like--me--in this?"

  "I like you much better," Slone said, bluntly.

  "Auntie made this--and she's been trying to get me to ride in it."

  "It changes you, Lucy. . . . But can you ride as well?"

  "I'm afraid not. . . . What's Wildfire going to think of me?"

  "He'll like you better, too. . . . Lucy, how's the King comin' on?"

  "Lin, I'll tell you, if I wasn't as crazy about Wildfire as you are, I'd say he'll have to kill himself to beat the King," replied Lucy, with gravity.

  "Sometimes I doubt, too," said Slone. "But I only have to look at Wildfire to get back my nerve. . . . Lucy, that will be the grandest race ever run!"

  "Yes," sighed Lucy.

  "What's wrong? Don't you want Wildfire to win?"

  "Yes and no. But I'm going to beat the King, anyway. . . . Bring on your Wildfire!"

  Lucy unsaddled Sarchedon and turned him loose to graze while Slone went out after Wildfire. And presently it appeared that Lucy might have some little time to wait. Wildfire had lately been trusted to hobbles, which fact made it likely that he had strayed.