There
was nothing to tell her, but she knew that these were Big Louie's
horses. And Big Louie was a dreamy incompetent--he had left them for a
moment, that was all, and they had become frightened and bolted. But
Big Louie never neglected his team . . . they were not wet . . . they
had not been running far. And their fright became less when she
dismounted and approached them, soothing them with her voice until they
let her touch their sleek sides, without rearing away.
Dusk had come and gone, for it was growing dark. Uncertain, more and
more unnerved as she stood and gazed at the forbidding, black-shadowed
ridges beyond her, the girl had to fight suddenly against an impulse to
turn and race back to the lower country and Morrison and home. Even
then the rifle shots meant nothing to her--and pride would not let her
run. She remounted and rode on a rod or two, and stopped to look back
at the team which was watching her; she pressed on and rounded the
curve. Ragtime reared and snorted there, and she barely stifled the
cry which his strange behavior brought to her lips. Because of her
senseless panic she punished him the more severely, and sent him on.
And then she saw what the horse had already seen.
A blue-shirted figure lay half in the road, half in the undergrowth
that fringed it, one arm crooked under him and his face prone in the
dust; a bulkier mass was stretched wholly within the trail--and she
recognized him, too.
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