No one will know."
Slone's heart throbbed. She was his. The clasp of her hands on his, the gleam
of her eyes, the white, daring flash of her face in the shadow of the
moon--these told him she was his. How it had come about was beyond him, but he
realized the truth. What a girl! This was the same nerve which she showed when
she had run Wildfire out in front of the fleetest horses in the uplands.
"Tell me, then," he began, quietly, with keen gaze roving under the trees and
eyes strained tight, "tell me what's come off."
"Don't you know?" she queried, in amaze.
"Only that for some reason I'm done in Bostil's Ford. It can't be because I
punched Joel Creech. I felt it before I met Bostil at the store. He taunted
me. We had bitter words. He told before all of them how the outfit I wore you
gave me. An' then I dared him to race the King. My horse an' my life against
YOU!"
"Yes, I know," she whispered, softly. "It's all over town. . . . Oh, Lin! it
was a grand bet! And Bostil four-flushed, as the riders say. For days a race
between Wildfire and the King had been in the air.
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