“Let her alone,” he growled to his men.  “I gave her orders to train the King.  An’ after Van got well mebbe Lucy just had a habit of ridin’ down there.  She can take care of herself.”

To himself, when alone, Bostil muttered:  “Wonder what the kid has looked up now?  Some mischief, I’ll bet!”

Nevertheless, he did not speak to her on the subject.  Deep in his heart he knew he feared his keen-eyed daughter, and during these days he was glad she was not in evidence at the hours when he could not very well keep entirely to himself.  Bostil was afraid Lucy might divine what he had on his mind.  There was no one else he cared for.  Holley, that old hawk-eyed rider, might see through him, but Bostil knew Holley would be loyal, whatever he saw.

Toward the end of the month, when Somers returned from horse-hunting, Bostil put him and Shugrue to work upon the big flatboat down at the crossing.  Bostil himself went down, and he walked—­a fact apt to be considered unusual if it had been noticed.

“Put in new planks,” was his order to the men.  “An’ pour hot tar in the cracks.  Then when the tar dries shove her in . . . but I’ll tell you when.”

Every morning young Creech rowed over to see if the boat was ready to take the trip across to bring his father’s horses back.  The third morning of work on the boat Bostil met Joel down there.  Joel seemed eager to speak to Bostil.  He certainly was a wild-looking youth.

“Bostil, my ole man is losin’ sleep waitin’ to git the hosses over,” he said, frankly.  “Feed’s almost gone.”

“That’ll be all right, Joel,” replied Bostil.  “You see, the river ain’t begun to raise yet. . . .  How’re the hosses comin’ on?”

“Grand, sir—­grand!” exclaimed the simple Joel.  “Peg is runnin’ faster than last year, but Blue Roan is leavin’ her a mile.  Dad’s goin’ to bet all he has.  The roan can’t lose this year.”

Bostil felt like a bull bayed at by a hound.  Blue Roan was a young horse, and every season he had grown bigger and faster.  The King had reached the limit of his speed.  That was great, Bostil knew, and enough to win over any horse in the uplands, providing the luck of the race fell even.  Luck, however, was a fickle thing.

“I was advisin’ Dad to swim the hosses over,” declared Joel, deliberately.

“A-huh!  You was? . . .  An’ why?” rejoined Bostil.

Joel’s simplicity and frankness vanished, and with them his rationality.  He looked queer.  His contrasting eyes shot little malignant gleams.  He muttered incoherently, and moved back toward the skiff, making violent gestures, and his muttering grew to shouting, though still incoherent.  He got in the boat and started to row back over the river.

“Sure he’s got a screw loose,” observed Somers.  Shugrue tapped his grizzled head significantly.

Bostil made no comment.  He strode away from his men down to the river shore, and, finding a seat on a stone, he studied the slow eddying red current of the river and he listened.  If any man knew the strange and remorseless Colorado, that man was Bostil.  He never made any mistakes in anticipating what the river was going to do.