“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.