WILDFIRE

by ZANE GREY




CHAPTER I

For some reason the desert scene before Lucy Bostil awoke varying emotions--a
sweet gratitude for the fullness of her life there at the Ford, yet a haunting
remorse that she could not be wholly content--a vague loneliness of soul--a
thrill and a fear for the strangely calling future, glorious, unknown.

She longed for something to happen. It might be terrible, so long as it was
wonderful. This day, when Lucy had stolen away on a forbidden horse, she was
eighteen years old. The thought of her mother, who had died long ago on their
way into this wilderness, was the one drop of sadness in her joy. Lucy loved
everybody at Bostil's Ford and everybody loved her. She loved all the horses
except her father's favorite racer, that perverse devil of a horse, the great
Sage King.

Lucy was glowing and rapt with love for all she beheld from her lofty perch:
the green-and-pink blossoming hamlet beneath her, set between the beauty of
the gray sage expanse and the ghastliness of the barren heights; the swift
Colorado sullenly thundering below in the abyss; the Indians in their bright
colors, riding up the river trail; the eagle poised like a feather on the air,
and a beneath him the grazing cattle making black dots on the sage; the deep
velvet azure of the sky; the golden lights on the bare peaks and the lilac
veils in the far ravines; the silky rustle of a canyon swallow as he shot