Part 61

A groan was forced between Garth's clenched teeth. "Did they hurt her?" he demanded, waiting for the answer like a condemned man waits for the final stroke.

But Rina shook her head. "Nick Grylls, him tak' off his hat, polite," she said. "'Erbe't not say anyt'ing to her."

He breathed again. "Did they refuse to take you along?" he asked.

The stolid brown face was twisted with pain again. She lowered her head, and clung to the horn of her saddle. "No," she said very low. "They 'fraid to leave me be'ind. But they don' want me. And I want to die when I see 'Erbe't with her. They all glad when t'ink I to die!"

Garth forbore to question her further.

His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing eyes.

Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly, hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily losing in the chase.

To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long night. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end its own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.

With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before; and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.

Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."

Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will walk."

Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting forth on the prairie alone--that would come later. At present he stood equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them together, if it would save Natalie.

The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and food enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added to the complaining backs of the other two horses.

Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two marches. There's plenty of grub there."

But Charley flatly refused.

"Very well," said Garth. "I'll leave a note for you every time we stop, telling you what time we passed. If you don't overtake us to-night or to-morrow, I'll leave more grub for you. If we don't catch them in a day or so," he added with a look at the remaining horses, "we'll all be in the same boat again."

It was a grim, brusque leave-taking. The boy averted his head as they left him, to hide the look of despair in his eyes. He knew what the lowering, wintry clouds portended on the prairie; and in his heart it was a final farewell that he bade them. But he kept his chin up, and strode manfully after.

Garth did not suspect what was passing in his mind; the city man had never seen a snowstorm on the prairie. Topping every rise, he looked back, and waved his hat at the plodding figure, slightly bent under the weight of his pack.

"He's tough! He'll come through all right!" he said to Rina more than once--perhaps because he needed secretly to reassure himself.

Rina, preoccupied with her own heavy thoughts, did not seem to care either way.

About ten o'clock they descended into a considerable coulée whose stony bed still contained some standing pools. Here, by the water, Grylls's party had encamped for the night; and the ashes of their fire were still warm. From the extent of the trampling in the mud, it was clear the whole party had made a rendezvous here; and beyond the coulée, even Garth had no difficulty in following the trail of the fourteen horses over the turf. He rode ahead now; consulting his compass, he saw that the way always led due northwest.

Some time later his eye was attracted by a splash of white in the grass. Throwing himself off his horse, he pounced upon it. It was a plain little square of linen; and in the border was printed in small neat characters "N. Bland." The find nearly unmanned him; he fancied the scrap of linen was still damp with her tears; and the old madness of desperation surged over him again. He forced his weary horse into a gallop. Rina indifferently followed.

Pretty soon the snow began to fall in large, wet flakes, drifting down as idly and erratically as the opening notes of one who dreams at the piano--large flakes falling direct to the ground and lingering there like measured notes; and little white coveys suddenly eddying hither and thither, like aimless runs up and down the keyboard.

Rina lifted her brown face to the darkening sky. "We better go back to the coulée," she called after Garth.

He frowned. "Nonsense!" he cried irritably. "A flurry of snow can't hurt anybody! It'll turn into rain directly!"

She shrugged, and said no more.

The mute symphony of the snow was played imperceptibly accelerando. The flakes became smaller, and thicker, and dryer; and each gust of wind was a hint steadier and stronger than the last. Their radius of view was little by little restricted: the distant hills faded out of sight, and the white dome closed over and around them, until at last they seemed to be traversing a little island of firm ground, with edges crumbling into a misty void. Presently the ground, too, was overlaid with white; earth and sky commingled indistinguishably; and all that held them to earth was the quadruple line of black hoof-marks extending a little way behind. The horses sulked and hung their heads.

They came to another and a shallower coulée, which seemed to take a northeasterly direction across the prairie; whereas all the watercourses they had crossed hitherto tended to the southeast. Garth, on the watch for any such evidences, suspected they had crossed a height of land. On the other side of this coulée he found he could no longer trace the passage of the preceding cavalcade under the thickening snow. He impatiently called on Rina; but she merely shrugged, refusing to look.