“Won’t thet be a grand race!” exclaimed an enthusiastic rider.  “Wisht I had about a million to bet!”

“Bostil, I ’most forgot,” went on Brackton, “Cordts sent word by the Piutes who come to-day thet he’d be here sure.”

Bostil’s face subtly changed.  The light seemed to leave it.  He did not reply to Brackton—­did not show that he heard the comment on all sides.  Public opinion was against Bostil’s permission to allow Cordts and his horse-thieves to attend the races.  Bostil appeared grave, regretful.  Yet it was known by all that in the strangeness and perversity of his rider’s nature he wanted Cordts to see the King win that race.  It was his rider’s vanity and defiance in the teeth of a great horse-thief.  But no good would come of Cordts’s presence —­that much was manifest.

There was a moment of silence.  All these men, if they did not fear Bostil, were sometimes uneasy when near him.  Some who were more reckless than discreet liked to irritate him.  That, too, was a rider’s weakness.

“When’s Creech’s hosses comin’ over?” asked Colson, with sudden interest.

“Wal, I reckon—­soon,” replied Bostil, constrainedly, and he turned away.

By the time he got home all the excitement of the past hour had left him and gloom again abided in his mind.  He avoided his daughter and forgot the fact of her entering a horse in the race.  He ate supper alone, without speaking to his sister.  Then in the dusk he went out to the corrals and called the King to the fence.  There was love between master and horse.  Bostil talked low, like a woman, to Sage King.  And the hard old rider’s heart was full and a lump swelled in his throat, for contact with the King reminded him that other men loved other horses.

Bostil returned to the house and went to his room, where he sat thinking in the dark.  By and by all was quiet.  Then seemingly with a wrench he bestirred himself and did what for him was a strange action.  Removing his boots, he put on a pair of moccasins.  He slipped out of the house; he kept to the flagstone of the walk; he took to the sage till out of the village, and then he sheered round to the river trail.  With the step and sureness and the eyes of an Indian he went down through that pitch-black canyon to the river and the ford.

The river seemed absolutely the same as during the day.  He peered through the dark opaqueness of gloom.  It moved there, the river he knew, shadowy, mysterious, murmuring.  Bostil went down to the edge of the water, and, sitting there, he listened.  Yes—­the voices of the stream were the same.  But after a long time he imagined there was among them an infinitely low voice, as if from a great distance.  He imagined this; he doubted; he made sure; and then all seemed fancy again.  His mind held only one idea and was riveted round it.  He strained his hearing, so long, so intently, that at last he knew he had heard what he was longing for.  Then in the gloom he took to the trail, and returned home as he had left, stealthily, like an Indian.