Lucy hurried away down the lane and entered the house without meeting any one.  In her room she changed her clothes and lay down to rest and think.

Strangely enough, Lucy might never have encountered Joel Creech out in the sage, for all the thought she gave him.  Her mind was busy with the crippled rider.  Who was he?  Where was he from?  What strange passion he had shown over the recovery of that wonderful red horse!  Lucy could not forget the feeling of his iron arm when he held her in a kind of frenzied gratitude.  A wild upland rider, living only for a wild horse!  How like Indians some of these riders!  Yet this fellow had seemed different from most of the uncouth riders she had known.  He spoke better.  He appeared to have had some little schooling.  Lucy did not realize that she was interested in him.  She thought she was sorry for him and interested in the stallion.  She began to compare Wildfire with Sage King, and if she remembered rightly Wildfire, even in his disheveled state, had appeared a worthy rival of the King.  What would Bostil say at sight of that flame-colored stallion?  Lucy thrilled.

Later she left her room to see if the hour was opportune for her plan to make up a pack of supplies for the rider.  Her aunt was busy in the kitchen, and Bostil had not come in.  Lucy took advantage of the moment to tie up a pack and carry it to her room.  Somehow the task pleased her.  She recalled the lean face of the rider.  And that recalled his ragged appearance.  Why not pack up an outfit of clothes?  Bostil had a stock-room full of such accessories for his men.  Then Lucy, glowing with the thought, hurried to Bostil’s stock-room, and with deft hands and swift judgment selected an outfit for the rider, even down to a comb and razor.  All this she carried quickly to her room, where in her thoughtfulness she added a bit of glass from a broken mirror, and soap and a towel.  Then she tied up a second pack.

Bostil did not come home to supper, a circumstance that made Lucy’s aunt cross.  They ate alone, and, waiting awhile, were rather late in clearing away the table.  After this Lucy had her chance in the dusk of early evening, and she carried both packs way out into the sage and left them near the trail.

“Hope a coyote doesn’t come along,” she said.  That possibility, however, did not worry her as much as getting those packs up on the King.  How in the world would she ever do it?

She hurried back to the house, stealthily keeping to the shadow of the cottonwoods, for she would have faced an embarrassing situation if she had met her father, even had he been in a good humor.  And she reached the sitting-room unobserved.  The lamps had been lighted and a log blazed on the hearth.  She was reading when Bostil entered.

“Hello, Lucy!” he said.

He looked tired, and Lucy knew he had been drinking, because when he had been he never offered to kiss her.  The strange, somber shade was still on his face, but it brightened somewhat at sight of her.  Lucy greeted him as always.