Wildfire (1999)

by Grey, Zane

  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 some one 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 canyon. But I thought I'd slipped by. Some one 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 canyons 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 canyons 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 canyon. It was only a tributary of the great canyon, 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 canyon-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 canyon, 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 canyon running parallel with this central and longer one. The dips and breaks showed how all these canyons 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 canyon?"

  "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 canyon. Would you believe you could ride offer 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 gun-play, 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?"

  "Wal, 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 ran!"

  "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?"

  "Oh, I could, 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 sacrifice his vengeance just to see the red stallion beat the gray. If Creech kept the King in ransom for Lucy he would have to stay deeply hidden in the wild breaks of the canyon country or leave the uplands. For Bostil would never let that deed go unreckoned with. Like Bostil, old Creech was half horse and half human. The human side had warmed to remorse. He had regretted Lucy's plight; he wanted her to be safe at home again and to find happiness; he remembered what she had been to him when she was a little girl. Creech's other side was more complex.

  Before the evening meal ended Lucy divined that Creech was dark and troubled because he had resigned himself to a sacrifice harder than it had seemed in the first flush of noble feeling. But she doubted him no more. She was safe. The King would be returned. She would compel her father to pay Creech horse for horse. And perhaps the lesson to Bostil would be worth all the pain of effort and distress of mind that it had cost her.

  That night as she lay awake listening to the roar of the wind in the pines a strange premonition--like a mysterious voice---came to her with the assurance that Slone was on her trail.

  On the following day Creech appeared to have cast off the brooding mood. Still, he was not talkative. He applied himself to constant watching from the rim.

  Lucy began to feel rested. That long trip with Creech had made her thin and hard and strong. She spent the hours under the shade of a cedar on the rim
that protected her from sun and wind. The wind, particularly, was hard to stand. It blew a gale out of the west, a dry, odorous, steady rush that roared through the pine-tops and flattened the long, white grass. This day Creech had to build up a barrier of rock round his camp-fire, to keep it from blowing away. And there was a constant danger of firing the grass.

  Once Lucy asked Creech what would happen in that case.

  "Wal, I reckon the grass would burn back even ag'in thet wind," replied Creech. "I'd hate to see fire in the woods now before the rains come. It's been the longest, dryest spell I ever lived through. But fer thet my hosses-- This hyar's a west wind, an' it's blowin' harder every day. It'll fetch the rains."

  Next day about noon, when both wind and heat were high, Lucy was awakened from a doze. Creech was standing near her. When he turned his long gaze away from the canyon he was smiling. It was a smile at once triumphant and sad.

  "Joel's comin' with the hosses!"

  Lucy jumped up, trembling and agitated. "Oh! . . . Where? Where?"

  Creech pointed carefully with bent hand, like an Indian, and Lucy either could not get the direction or see far enough.

  "Right down along the base of thet red wall. A line of hosses. Jest like a few crawlin' ants' . . . An' now they're creepin' out of sight."

  "Oh, I can't see them!" cried Lucy. "Are you SURE?"

  "Positive an' sartin," he replied. "Joel's comin'. He'll be up hyar before long. I reckon we'd jest as well let him come. Fer there's water an' grass hyar. An' down below grass is scarce."

  It seemed an age to Lucy, waiting there, until she did see horses zigzagging the ridges below. They disappeared, and then it was another age before they reappeared close under the bulge of wall. She thrilled at sight of Sage King and Sarchedon. She got only a glimpse of them. They must pass round under her to climb a split in the wall, and up a long draw that reached level ground back in the forest. But they were near, and Lucy tried to wait. Creech showed eagerness at first, and then went on with his camp-fire duties. While in camp he always cooked a midday meal.

  Lucy saw the horses first. She screamed out. Creech jumped up in alarm.