“I’d dearly love to own Plume,” said Lucy, demurely.

Bostil had grown red in the face and now he was on the rack.  The monstrous selfishness of a rider who had been supreme in his day could not be changed.

“Girl, I—­I thought you hadn’t no use for Plume,” he stammered.

“I haven’t—­the jade!  She threw me once.  I’ve never forgiven her . . . .  Dad, I’m only teasing you.  Don’t I know you couldn’t give one of those racers away?  You couldn’t!”

“Lucy, I reckon you’re right,” Bostil burst out in immense relief.

“Dad, I’ll bet if Cordts gets me and holds me as ransom for the King—­as he’s threatened—­you’ll let him have me!”

“Lucy, now thet ain’t funny!” complained the father.

“Dear Dad, keep your old racers!  But, remember, I’m my father’s daughter.  I can love a horse, too.  Oh, if I ever get the one I want to love!  A wild horse—­a desert stallion—­pure Arabian—­broken right by an Indian!  If I ever get him, Dad, you look out!  For I’ll run away from Sarch and Ben—­and I’ll beat the King!”

The hamlet of Bostil’s Ford had a singular situation, though, considering the wonderful nature of that desert country, it was not exceptional.  It lay under the protecting red bluff that only Lucy Bostil cared to climb.  A hard-trodden road wound down through rough breaks in the canyon wall to the river.  Bostil’s house, at the head of the village, looked in the opposite direction, down the sage slope that widened like a colossal fan.  There was one wide street bordered by cottonwoods and cabins, and a number of gardens and orchards, beginning to burst into green and pink and white.  A brook ran out of a ravine in the huge bluff, and from this led irrigation ditches.  The red earth seemed to blossom at the touch of water.

The place resembled an Indian encampment—­quiet, sleepy, colorful, with the tiny-streams of water running everywhere, and lazy columns of blue wood-smoke rising.  Bostil’s Ford was the opposite of a busy village, yet its few inhabitants, as a whole, were prosperous.  The wants of pioneers were few.  Perhaps once a month the big, clumsy flatboat was rowed across the river with horses or cattle or sheep.  And the season was now close at hand when for weeks, sometimes months, the river was unfordable.  There were a score of permanent families, a host of merry, sturdy children, a number of idle young men, and only one girl—­Lucy Bostil.  But the village always had transient inhabitants—­friendly Utes and Navajos in to trade, and sheep-herders with a scraggy, woolly flock, and travelers of the strange religious sect identified with Utah going on into the wilderness.  Then there were always riders passing to and fro, and sometimes unknown ones regarded with caution.  Horse-thieves sometimes boldly rode in, and sometimes were able to sell or trade.  In the matter of horse-dealing Bostil’s Ford was as bold as the thieves.