{"product_id":"2940013336391","title":"WILDFIRE","description":"CHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFor some reason the desert scene before Lucy Bostil awoke varying\u003cbr\u003eemotions--a sweet gratitude for the fullness of her life there at the\u003cbr\u003eFord, yet a haunting remorse that she could not be wholly content--a\u003cbr\u003evague loneliness of soul--a thrill and a fear for the strangely calling\u003cbr\u003efuture, glorious, unknown.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe longed for something to happen. It might be terrible, so long as it\u003cbr\u003ewas wonderful. This day, when Lucy had stolen away on a forbidden\u003cbr\u003ehorse, she was eighteen years old. The thought of her mother, who had\u003cbr\u003edied long ago on their way into this wilderness, was the one drop of\u003cbr\u003esadness in her joy. Lucy loved everybody at Bostil's Ford and everybody\u003cbr\u003eloved her. She loved all the horses except her father's favorite racer,\u003cbr\u003ethat perverse devil of a horse, the great Sage King.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLucy was glowing and rapt with love for all she beheld from her lofty\u003cbr\u003eperch: the green-and-pink blossoming hamlet beneath her, set between\u003cbr\u003ethe beauty of the gray sage expanse and the ghastliness of the barren\u003cbr\u003eheights; the swift Colorado sullenly thundering below in the abyss; the\u003cbr\u003eIndians in their bright colors, riding up the river trail; the eagle\u003cbr\u003epoised like a feather on the air, and a beneath him the grazing cattle\u003cbr\u003emaking black dots on the sage; the deep velvet azure of the sky; the\u003cbr\u003egolden lights on the bare peaks and the lilac veils in the far ravines;\u003cbr\u003ethe silky rustle of a canyon swallow as he shot downward in the sweep\u003cbr\u003eof the wind; the fragrance of cedar, the flowers of the spear-pointed\u003cbr\u003emescal; the brooding silence, the beckoning range, the purple distance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhatever it was Lucy longed for, whatever was whispered by the wind and\u003cbr\u003ewritten in the mystery of the waste of sage and stone, she wanted it to\u003cbr\u003ehappen there at Bostil's Ford. She had no desire for civilization, she\u003cbr\u003eflouted the idea of marrying the rich rancher of Durango. Bostil's\u003cbr\u003esister, that stern but lovable woman who had brought her up and taught\u003cbr\u003eher, would never persuade her to marry against her will. Lucy imagined\u003cbr\u003eherself like a wild horse--free, proud, untamed, meant for the desert;\u003cbr\u003eand here she would live her life. The desert and her life seemed as\u003cbr\u003eone, yet in what did they resemble each other--in what of this scene\u003cbr\u003ecould she read the nature of her future?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShudderingly she rejected the red, sullen, thundering river, with its\u003cbr\u003eswift, changeful, endless, contending strife--for that was tragic. And\u003cbr\u003eshe rejected the frowning mass of red rock, upreared, riven and split\u003cbr\u003eand canyoned, so grim and aloof--for that was barren. But she accepted\u003cbr\u003ethe vast sloping valley of sage, rolling gray and soft and beautiful,\u003cbr\u003edown to the dim mountains and purple ramparts of the horizon. Lucy did\u003cbr\u003enot know what she yearned for, she did not know why the desert called\u003cbr\u003eto her, she did not know in what it resembled her spirit, but she did\u003cbr\u003eknow that these three feelings were as one, deep in her heart. For ten\u003cbr\u003eyears, every day of her life, she had watched this desert scene, and\u003cbr\u003enever had there been an hour that it was not different, yet the same.\u003cbr\u003eTen years--and she grew up watching, feeling--till from the desert's\u003cbr\u003ethousand moods she assimilated its nature, loved her bonds, and could\u003cbr\u003enever have been happy away from the open, the color, the freedom, the\u003cbr\u003ewildness. On this birthday, when those who loved her said she had\u003cbr\u003ebecome her own mistress, she acknowledged the claim of the desert\u003cbr\u003eforever. And she experienced a deep, rich, strange happiness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHers always then the mutable and immutable desert, the leagues and\u003cbr\u003eleagues of slope and sage and rolling ridge, the great canyons and the\u003cbr\u003egiant cliffs, the dark river with its mystic thunder of waters, the\u003cbr\u003epine-fringed plateaus, the endless stretch of horizon, with its lofty,\u003cbr\u003eisolated, noble monuments, and the bold ramparts with their beckoning\u003cbr\u003ebeyond! Hers always the desert seasons: the shrill, icy blast, the\u003cbr\u003eintense cold, the steely skies, the fading snows; the gray old sage and\u003cbr\u003ethe bleached grass under the pall of the spring sand-storms; the hot\u003cbr\u003efurnace breath of summer, with its magnificent cloud pageants in the\u003cbr\u003esky, with the black tempests hanging here and there over the peaks,\u003cbr\u003edark veils floating down and rainbows everywhere, and the lacy\u003cbr\u003ewaterfalls upon the glistening cliffs and the thunder of the red\u003cbr\u003efloods; and the glorious golden autumn when it was always afternoon and\u003cbr\u003etime stood still! Hers always the rides in the open, with the sun at\u003cbr\u003eher back and the wind in her face! And hers surely, sooner or later,\u003cbr\u003ethe nameless adventure which had its inception in the strange yearning\u003cbr\u003eof her heart and presaged its fulfilment somewhere down that trailless\u003cbr\u003esage-slope she loved so well!","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47147519213808,"sku":"2940013336391","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013336391_p0.jpg?v=1763591147","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013336391","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}