Lucy looked away from the dark, staring eyes. A light in them confused her.
"Never mind me. You say you were weak? Have you been ill?"
"No, miss, just starved.... I starved on Wildfire's trail."
Lucy ran to her saddle and got the biscuits out of the pockets of her coat, and she ran back to the rider.
"Here. I never thought. Oh, you've had a hard time of it! I understand. That wonderful flame of a horse! I'd have stayed, too. My father was a rider once. Bostil. Did you ever hear of him?"
"Bostil. The name—I've heard." Then the rider lay thinking, as he munched a biscuit. "Yes, I remember, but it was long ago. I spent a night with a wagon-train, a camp of many men and women, religious people, working into Utah. Bostil had a boat at the crossing of the Fathers."
"Yes, they called the Ferry that."
"I remember well now. They said Bostil couldn't count his horses—that he was a rich man, hard on riders—an' he'd used a gun more than once."
Lucy bowed her head. "Yes, that's my dad."
The rider did not seem to see how he had hurt her.