Wildfire (1999) (35 page)

"Son, you're a smart hossman!" exclaimed Creech, in disgust.

"Shall I git on the King an' ketch them?"

"No. Hold the King." Creech went out after Plume, but the excited and wary horse eluded him. Then Creech gave up, caught his own mustangs, and hurried into camp.

"Lucy, if Cordts gits after Sarch an' the others it'll be as well fer us," he said.

Soon they were riding into the forest, Creech leading, Lucy in the center, and Joel coming behind on the King. Two unsaddled mustangs carrying the packs were driven in front. Creech limited the gait to the best that the pack-horses could do. They made fast time. The level forest floor, hard and springy, afforded the best kind of going.

A cold dread had once more clutched Lucy's heart. What would be the end of this flight? The way Creech looked back increased her dread. How horrible it would be if Cordts accomplished what he had always threatened--to run off with both her and the King! Lucy lost her confidence in Creech. She did not glance again at Joel. Once had been enough. She rode on with heavy heart. Anxiety and dread and conjecture and a gradual sinking of spirit weighed her down. Yet she never had a clearer perception of outside things. The forest loomed thicker and darker. The sky was seen only through a green, crisscross of foliage waving in the roaring gale. This strong wind was like a blast in Lucy's face, and its keen dryness cracked her lips.

When they rode out of the forest, down a gentle slope of wind-swept grass, to an opening into a canyon Lucy was surprised to recognize the place. How quickly the ride through the forest had been made!

Creech dismounted. "Git off, Lucy. You, Joel, hurry an' hand me the little pack. . . . Now I'll take Lucy an' the King down in hyar. You go thet way with the hosses an' make as if you was hidin' your trail, but don't. Do you savvy?"

Joel shook his head. He looked sullen, somber, strange. His father repeated what he had said.

"You're wantin' Cordts to split on the trail?" asked Joel.

"Sure. He'll ketch up with you sometime. But you needn't be afeared if he does."

"I ain't a-goin' to do thet."

"Why not?" Creech demanded, slowly, with a rising voice.

"I'm a-goin' with you. What d'ye mean, Dad, by this move? You'll be headin' back fer the Ford. An' we'd git safer if we go the other way."

Creech evidently controlled his temper by an effort. "I'm takin' Lucy an' the King back to Bostil."

Joel echoed those words, slowly divining them. "Takin' them BOTH! The girl. . . . An' givin' up the King!"

"Yes, both of them. I've changed my mind, Joel. Now--you--"

But Creech never finished what he meant to say. Joel Creech was suddenly seized by a horrible madness. It was then, perhaps, that the final thread which linked his mind to rationality stretched and snapped. His face turned green. His strange eyes protruded. His jaw worked. He frothed at the mouth. He leaped, apparently to get near his father, but he missed his direction. Then, as if sight had come back, he wheeled and made strange gestures, all the while cursing incoherently. The father's shocked face began to show disgust. Then part of Joel's ranting became intelligible.

"Shut up!" suddenly roared Creech.

"No, I won't!" shrieked Joel, wagging his head in spent passion. "An' you ain't a-goin' to take thet girl home. . . . I'll take her with me. . . . An' you take the hosses home!"

"You're crazy!" hoarsely shouted Creech, his face going black. "They allus said so. But I never believed thet."

"An' if I'm crazy, thet girl made me. . . . You know what I'm a-goin' to do? . . . I'll strip her naked--an' I'll--"

Lucy saw old Creech lunge and strike. She heard the sodden blow. Joel went down. But he scrambled up with his eyes and mouth resembling those of a mad hound Lucy once had seen. The fact that he reached twice for his gun and could not find it proved the breaking connection of nerve and sense. Creech jumped and grappled with Joel. There was a wrestling, strained struggle. Creech's hair stood up and his face had a kind of sick fury, and he continued to curse and command. They fought for the possession of the gun. But Joel seemed to have superhuman strength. His hold on the gun could not be broken. Moreover, he kept straining to point the gun at his father. Lucy screamed. Creech yelled hoarsely. But the boy was beyond reason or help, and he was beyond over powering! Lucy saw him bend his arm in spite of the desperate hold upon it and fire the gun. Creech's hoarse entreaties ceased as his hold on Joel broke. He staggered. His arms went up with a tragic, terrible gesture. He fell. Joel stood over him, shaking and livid, but he showed only the vaguest realization of the deed. His actions were instinctive. He was the animal that had clawed himself free. Further proof of his aberration stood out in the action of sheathing his gun; he made the motion to do so, but he only dropped it in the grass.

Sight of that dropped gun broke Lucy's spell of horror, which had kept her silent but for one scream. Suddenly her blood leaped like fire in her veins. She measured the distance to Sage King. Joel was turning. Then Lucy darted at the King, reached him, and, leaping, was half up on him when he snorted and jumped, not breaking her hold, but keeping her from getting up. Then iron hands clutched her and threw her, like an empty sack, to the grass.

Joel Creech did not say a word. His distorted face had the deriding scorn of a superior being. Lucy lay flat on her back, watching him. Her mind worked swiftly. She would have to fight for her body and her life. Her terror had fled with her horror. She was not now afraid of this demented boy. She meant to fight, calculating like a cunning Indian, wild as a trapped wildcat.

Lucy lay perfectly still, for she knew she had been thrown near the spot where the gun lay. If she got her hands on that gun she would kill Joel. It would be the action of an instant. She watched Joel while he watched her. And she saw that he had his foot on the rope round Sage King's neck. The King never liked a rope. He was nervous. He tossed his head to get rid of it. Creech, watching Lucy all the while, reached for the rope, pulled the King closer and closer, and untied the knot. The King stood then, bridle down and quiet. Instead of a saddle he wore a blanket strapped round him.

It seemed that Lucy located the gun without turning her eyes away from Joel's. She gathered all her force--rolled over swiftly--again --got her hands on the gun just as Creech leaped like a panther upon her. His weight crushed her flat--his strength made her hand-hold like that of a child. He threw the gun aside. Lucy lay face down, unable to move her body while he stood over her. Then he struck her, not a stunning blow, but just the hard rap a cruel rider gives to a horse that wants its own way. Under that blow Lucy's spirit rose to a height of terrible passion. Still she did not lose her cunning; the blow increased it. That blow showed Joel to be crazy. She might outwit a crazy man, where a man merely wicked might master her.

Creech tried to turn her. Lucy resisted. And she was strong. Resistance infuriated Creech. He cuffed her sharply. This action only made him worse. Then with hands like steel claws he tore away her blouse.

The shock of his hands on her bare flesh momentarily weakened Lucy, and Creech dragged at her until she lay seemingly helpless before him.

And Lucy saw that at the sight of her like this something had come between Joel Creech's mad motives and their execution. Once he had loved her--desired her. He looked vague. He stroked her shoulder. His strange eyes softened, then blazed with a different light. Lucy divined that she was lost unless she could recall his insane fury. She must begin that terrible fight in which now the best she could hope for was to make him kill her quickly.

Swift and vicious as a cat she fastened her teeth in his arm. She bit deep and held on. Creech howled like a dog. He beat her. He jerked and wrestled. Then he lifted her, and the swing of her body tore the flesh loose from his arm and broke her hold. Lucy half rose, crawled, plunged for the gun. She got it, too, only to have Creech kick it out of her hand. The pain of that brutal kick was severe, but when he cut her across the bare back with the rope she shrieked out. Supple and quick, she leaped up and ran. In vain! With a few bounds he had her again, tripped her up. Lucy fell over the dead body of the father. Yet even that did not shake her desperate nerve. All the ferocity of a desert-bred savage culminated in her, fighting for death.

Creech leaned down, swinging the coiled rope. He meant to do more than lash her with it. Lucy's hands flashed up, closed tight in his long hair. Then with a bellow he jerked up and lifted her sheer off the ground. There was an instant in which Lucy felt herself swung and torn; she saw everything as a whirling blur; she felt an agony in her wrists at which Creech was clawing. When he broke her hold there were handfuls of hair in Lucy's fists.

She fell again and had not the strength to rise. But Creech was raging, and little of his broken speech was intelligible. He knelt with a sharp knee pressing her down. He cut the rope. Nimbly, like a rider in moments of needful swiftness, he noosed one end of the rope round her ankle, then the end of the other piece round her wrist. He might have been tying up an unbroken mustang. Rising, he retained hold on both ropes. He moved back, sliding them through his hands. Then with a quick move he caught up Sage King's bridle.

Creech paused a moment, darkly triumphant. A hideous success showed in his strange eyes. A long-cherished mad vengeance had reached its fruition. Then he led the horse near to Lucy.

Warily he reached down. He did not know Lucy's strength was spent. He feared she might yet escape. With hard, quick grasp he caught her, lifted her, threw her over the King's back. He forced her down.

Lucy's resistance was her only salvation, because it kept him on the track of his old threat. She resisted all she could. He pulled her arms down round the King's neck and tied them close. Then he pulled hard on the rope on her ankle and tied that to her other ankle.

Lucy realized that she was bound fast. Creech had made good most of his threat. And now in her mind the hope of the death she had sought changed to the hope of life that was possible. Whatever power she had ever had over the King was in her voice. If only Creech would slip the bridle or cut the reins--if only Sage King could be free to run!

Lucy could turn her face far enough to see Creech. Like a fiend he was reveling in his work. Suddenly he picked up the gun.

"Look a-hyar!" he called, hoarsely.

With eyes on her, grinning horribly, he walked a few paces to where the long grass had not been trampled or pressed down. The wind, whipping up out of the canyon, was still blowing hard. Creech put the gun down in the grass and fired.

Sage King plunged. But he was not gun-shy. He steadied down with a pounding of heavy hoofs. Then Lucy could see again. A thin streak of yellow smoke rose--a little snaky flame--a slight crackling hiss! Then as the wind caught the blaze there came a rushing, low roar. Fire, like magic, raced and spread before the wind toward the forest.

Lucy had forgotten that Creech had meant to drive her into fire. The sudden horror of it almost caused collapse. Commotion within --cold and quake and nausea and agony--deadened her hearing and darkened her sight. But Creech's hard hands quickened her. She could see him then, though not clearly. His face seemed inhuman, misshapen, gray. His hands pulled at her arms--a last precaution to see that she was tightly bound. Then with the deft fingers of a rider he slipped Sage King's bridle.

Lucy could not trust her sight. What made the King stand so still? His ears went up--stiff--pointed!

Creech stepped back and laid a violent hand on Lucy's garments. She bent--twisted her neck to watch him. But her sight grew no clearer. Still she saw he meant to strip her naked. He braced himself for a strong, ripping pull. His yellow teeth showed deep in his lip. His contrasting eyes were alight with insane joy.

But he never pulled. Something attracted his attention. He looked. He saw something. The beast in him became human--the madness changed to rationality--the devil to a craven! His ashen lips uttered a low, terrible cry.

Lucy felt the King trembling in every muscle. She knew that was flight. She expected his loud snort, and was prepared for it when it rang out. In a second he would bolt. She knew that. She thrilled. She tried to call to him, but her lips were weak. Creech seemed paralyzed. The King shifted his position, and Lucy's last glimpse of Creech was one she would never forget. It was as if Creech faced burning hell!

Then the King whistled and reared. Lucy heard swift, dull, throbbing beats. Beats of a fast horse's hoofs on the run! She felt a surging thrill of joy. She could not think. All of her blood and bone and muscle seemed to throb. Suddenly the air split to a high-pitched, wild, whistling blast. It pierced to Lucy's mind. She knew that whistle.

"Wildfire!" she screamed, with bursting heart.

The King gave a mighty convulsive bound of terror. He, too, knew that whistle. And in that one great bound he launched out into a run. Straight across the line of burning grass! Lucy felt the sting of flame. Smoke blinded and choked her. Then clear, dry, keen wind sung in her ears and whipped her hair. The light about her darkened. The King had headed into the pines. The heavy roar of the gale overhead struck Lucy with new and torturing dread. Sage King once in his life was running away, bridleless, and behind him there was fire on the wings of the wind.

CHAPTER XVII