Things had happened at the Ford which would have concerned Lucy greatly had she not been over-excited about her own affairs.  Some one had ambushed Bostil in the cottonwoods near his house and had shot at him, narrowly missing him.  Bostil had sworn he recognized the shot as having come from a rifle, and that he knew to whom it belonged.  The riders did not believe this, and said some boy, shooting at a rabbit or coyote, had been afraid to confess he had nearly hit Bostil.  The riders all said Bostil was not wholly himself of late.  The river was still low.  The boat had not been repaired.  And Creech’s horses were still on the other side.

These things concerned Lucy, yet they only came and went swiftly through her mind.  She was obsessed by things intimately concerning herself.

“Oh, I oughtn’t to go,” she said, aloud.  But she did not even check Sarchedon’s long swing, his rocking-chair lope.  She had said a hundred times that she ought not go again out to the monuments.  For Lin Slone had fallen despairingly, terribly in love with her.

It was not this, she averred, but the monuments and the beautiful Wildfire that had woven a spell round her she could not break.  She had ridden Wildfire all through that strange region of monuments and now they claimed something of her.  Just as wonderful was Wildfire’s love for her.  The great stallion hated Slone and loved Lucy.  Of all the remarkable circumstances she had seen or heard about a horse, this fact was the most striking.  She could do anything with him.  All that savageness and wildness disappeared when she approached him.  He came at her call.  He whistled at sight of her.  He sent out a ringing blast of disapproval when she rode away.  Every day he tried to bite or kick Slone, but he was meek under Lucy’s touch.

But this morning there came to Lucy the first vague doubt of herself.  Once entering her mind, that doubt became clear.  And then she vowed she liked Slone as she might a brother.  And something within her accused her own conviction.  The conviction was her real self, and the accusation was some other girl lately born in her.  Lucy did not like this new person.  She was afraid of her.  She would not think of her unless she had to.

“I never cared for him—­that way,” she said, aloud.  “I don’t—­I couldn’t—­ever—­I—­I—­love Lin Slone!”

The spoken thought—­the sound of the words played havoc with Lucy’s self-conscious calmness.  She burned.  She trembled.  She was in a rage with herself.  She spurred Sarchedon into a run and tore through the sage, down into the valley, running him harder than she should have run him.  Then she checked him, and, penitent, petted him out of all proportion to her thoughtlessness.  The violent exercise only heated her blood and, if anything, increased this sudden and new torment.  Why had she discarded her boy’s rider outfit and chaps for a riding-habit made by her aunt, and one she had scorned to wear?  Some awful, accusing voice thundered in Lucy’s burning ears that she had done this because she was ashamed to face Lin Slone any more in that costume—­she wanted to appear different in his eyes, to look like a girl.  If that shameful suspicion was a fact why was it—–­what did it mean?  She could not tell, yet she was afraid of the truth.