Dale stood for some seconds in the doorway, his brain working rapidly. Then he leaped inside the cabin, took the girl up in his arms, carried her to his horse, mounted, and with the limp, sagging body in his arms rode into the night.
Reaction, also, was working on Banker Maison. Though more than an hour had passed since he had got into bed, following the departure of his nocturnal visitor, he had not slept a wink. His brain revolving the incidents of the night—it had been a positive panorama of vivid horrors.
The first gray streak of dawn was splitting the horizon when he gave it up, clambered out of bed and poured a generous drink from the bottle on the sideboard.
"God, a man needs something like this to brace him up after such a night!" he declared.
He took a second drink from the bottle, and a third. In the act of pouring a fourth he heard a sound at the back door, and with a gulp of terror he remembered that he had again forgotten to lock it.
Sanderson undoubtedly was returning!
Again Maison's body became clammy with a cold sweat. He stood in the room near the sideboard, tremblingly listening. For again there was a step on the stairs.
When he saw the door begin to open his knees knocked together, but there entered, not the dread apparition he expected, but Alva Dale, with the limp form of a woman in his arms!
The sudden breaking of the tension, and astonishment over what he saw, made Maison's voice hoarse.
"What's up now?" he demanded.