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.”