jutting out, and there make into the current, and while drifting down pull
hard to reach the landing opposite. Heavily laden as the boat was, the chances
were not wholly in favor of a successful crossing.

Lucy watched the slow, laborious struggle of the boatmen with the heavy oars
until she suddenly remembered the object of her visit down to the ford. She
appeared to be alone on her side of the river. At the landing opposite,
however, were two men; and presently Lucy recognized Joel Creech and his
father. A second glance showed Indians with burros, evidently waiting for the
boat. Joel Creech jumped into a skiff and shoved off. The elder man, judging
by his motions, seemed to be trying to prevent his son from leaving the shore.
But Joel began to row up-stream, keeping close to the shore. Lucy watched him.
No doubt he had seen her and was coming across. Either the prospect of meeting
him or the idea of meeting him there in the place where she was never herself
made her want to turn at once and ride back home. But her stubborn sense of
fairness overruled that. She would hold her ground solely in the hope of
persuading Joel to be reasonable. She saw the big flatboat sweep into line of
sight at the same time Joel turned into the current. But while the larger
craft drifted slowly the other way, the smaller one came swiftly down and
across. Joel swept out of the current into the eddy, rowed across that, and
slid the skiff up on the sand-bar. Then he stepped out. He was bareheaded and
barefooted, but it was not that which made him seem a stranger to Lucy.

"Are you lookin' fer me?" he shouted.

Lucy waved a hand for him to come up.

Then he approached. He was a tall, lean young man, stoop-shouldered and
bow-legged from much riding, with sallow, freckled face, a thin fuzz of beard,
weak mouth and chin, and eyes remarkable for their small size and piercing