can love a horse, too. Oh, if I ever get the one I want to love! A wild
horse--a desert stallion--pure Arabian--broken right by an Indian! If I ever
get him, Dad, you look out! For I'll run away from Sarch and Ben--and I'll
beat the King!"

The hamlet of Bostil's Ford had a singular situation, though, considering the
wonderful nature of that desert country, it was not exceptional. It lay under
the protecting red bluff that only Lucy Bostil cared to climb. A hard-trodden
road wound down through rough breaks in the canyon wall to the river. Bostil's
house, at the head of the village, looked in the opposite direction, down the
sage slope that widened like a colossal fan. There was one wide street
bordered by cottonwoods and cabins, and a number of gardens and orchards,
beginning to burst into green and pink and white. A brook ran out of a ravine
in the huge bluff, and from this led irrigation ditches. The red earth seemed
to blossom at the touch of water.

The place resembled an Indian encampment--quiet, sleepy, colorful, with the
tiny-streams of water running everywhere, and lazy columns of blue wood-smoke
rising. Bostil's Ford was the opposite of a busy village, yet its few
inhabitants, as a whole, were prosperous. The wants of pioneers were few.
Perhaps once a month the big, clumsy flatboat was rowed across the river with
horses or cattle or sheep. And the season was now close at hand when for
weeks, sometimes months, the river was unfordable. There were a score of
permanent families, a host of merry, sturdy children, a number of idle young
men, and only one girl--Lucy Bostil. But the village always had transient
inhabitants--friendly Utes and Navajos in to trade, and sheep-herders with a
scraggy, woolly flock, and travelers of the strange religious sect identified
with Utah going on into the wilderness. Then there were always riders passing
to and fro, and sometimes unknown ones regarded with caution. Horse-thieves
sometimes boldly rode in, and sometimes were able to sell or trade. In the