Bostil did not give Creech time to speak."Twenty-five hundred an' Two Face along with the rest!""My God, Bostil--stop it! I can't PART with Blue Roan.You're rich an' you've no heart.Thet I always knew.At least to me you never had, since I owned them two racers.Didn't I beg you, a little time back, to lend me a few hundred? To meet thet debt? An' you wouldn't, unless I'd sell the hosses.An' I had to lose my sheep.Now I'm a poor man--gettin' poorer all the time.But I won't sell or trade Blue Roan, not for all you've got!"Creech seemed to gain strength with his speech and passion with the strength.
His eyes glinted at the hard, paling face of his rival.He raised a clenching fist.
"An' by G--d, I'm goin' to win thet race!"During that week Lucy had heard many things about Joel Creech, and some of them were disquieting.
Some rider had not only found Joel's clothes on the trail, but he had recognized the track of the horse Lucy rode, and at once connected her with the singular discovery.Coupling that with Joel's appearance in the village incased in a heaving armor of adobe, the riders guessed pretty close to the truth.For them the joke was tremendous.And Joel Creech was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule.The riders made life unbearable for him.They had fun out of it as long as Joel showed signs of taking the joke manfully, which was not long, and then his resentment won their contempt.That led to sarcasm on their part and bitter anger on his.It came to Lucy's ears that Joel began to act and talk strangely.She found out that the rider Van had knocked Joel down in Brackton's store and had kicked a gun out of his hand.Van laughed off the rumor and Brackton gave her no satisfaction.Moreover, she heard no other rumors.The channels of gossip had suddenly closed to her.Bostil, when questioned by Lucy, swore in a way that amazed her, and all he told her was to leave Creech alone.Finally, when Muncie discharged Joel, who worked now and then, Lucy realized that something was wrong with Joel and that she was to blame for it.
She grew worried and anxious and sorry, but she held her peace, and determined to find out for herself what was wrong.Every day when she rode out into the sage she expected to meet him, or at least see him somewhere; nevertheless days went by and there was no sign of him.
One afternoon she saw some Indians driving sheep down the river road toward the ford, and, acting upon impulse, she turned her horse after them.
Lucy seldom went down the river road.Riding down and up was merely work, and a horse has as little liking for it as she had.Usually it was a hot, dusty trip, and the great, dark, overhanging walls had a depressing effect, upon her.She always felt awe at the gloomy canyon and fear at the strange, murmuring red river.But she started down this afternoon in the hope of meeting Joel.She had a hazy idea of telling him she was sorry for what she had done, and of asking him to forget it and pay no more heed to the riders.
The sheep raised a dust-cloud in the sandy wash where the road wound down, and Lucy hung back to let them get farther ahead.Gradually the tiny roar of pattering hoofs and the blended bleating and baaing died away.The dust-cloud, however, hung over the head of the ravine, and Lucy had to force Sarchedon through it.Sarchedon did not mind sand and dust, but he surely hated the smell of sheep.Lucy seldom put a spur to Sarchedon; still, she gave him a lash with her quirt, and then he went on obediently, if disgustedly.He carried his head like a horse that wondered why his mistress preferred to drive him down into an unpleasant hole when she might have been cutting the sweet, cool sage wind up on the slope.
The wash, with its sand and clay walls, dropped into a gulch, and there was an end of green growths.The road led down over solid rock.Gradually the rims of the gorge rose, shutting out the light and the cliffs.It was a winding road and one not safe to tarry on in a stormy season.Lucy had seen boulders weighing a ton go booming down that gorge during one of the sudden fierce desert storms, when a torrent of water and mud and stone went plunging on to the river.The ride through here was short, though slow.Lucy always had time to adjust her faculties for the overpowering contrast these lower regions presented.Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen thunder of the river.The river was low, too, for otherwise there would have been a deafening roar.
Presently she came out upon a lower branch of the canyon, into a great red-walled space, with the river still a thousand feet below, and the cliffs towering as high above her.The road led down along this rim where to the left all was open, across to the split and peaked wall opposite.The river appeared to sweep round a bold, bulging comer a mile above.It was a wide, swift, muddy, turbulent stream.A great bar of sand stretched out from the shore.
