She had anticipated the fall and had got her feet out of the stirrups, and she alighted standing, braced for the shock. Her left foot struck the top of a jagged rock, slipped, doubled under her, and she felt a sharp, agonizing pain in the ankle. For a moment she paid no attention to it, however, being more concerned for the pony, but when she noted that the animal had got up, seemingly none the worse for the fall, she suddenly realized that the ankle pained her terribly, and she hopped over to a flat rock and sat on it, to examine the injury. She worked the ankle rapidly back and forth, each movement bringing tears to her eyes. She had almost forgotten about her pursuers, and when she thought of them she got up and limped toward the pony, which had wandered a little away from where it had fallen.
And now the pony, which had performed so nobly for her during the miles she had ridden to reach this spot, suddenly seemed determined to undo all his service by yielding to a whim to avoid capture.
She tried threats, flattery, cajolery. Twice more she hobbled painfully near him, and each time he unconcernedly walked away. The third time, he allowed her to come very close, and just when she felt that success was very near, he snorted with pretended fright, wheeled, and slashed out with both hoofs at her and galloped off a full quarter of a mile. She could see him standing and looking at her, his ears erect, before the darkness blotted him from view altogether.
She tried again, groping her way painfully over rocks, slipping, stumbling, holding her breath from fear of snakes—but she could not find the pony. And then, white, shaking, clammy from her dread of the darkness, the awesome silence, and the possibility of Chavis and Kester finding her here, she groped blindly until she found a big rock rising high above its fellows, and after a struggle during which she tore the skin from her hands and knees, she climbed to its top and crouched on it, shuddering and crying. And she thought of Randerson; of his seriousness and his earnestness when he had said:
“I reckon you don’t know hate or fear or desperation.... Out here things run loose, an’ if you stay here long enough, some day you’ll meet them an’ recognize them for your own—an’ you’ll wonder how you ever got along without them.”
Well, she hated now; she hated everything—the country included—with a bitterness that, she felt, would never die. And she had felt fear, too, and desperation. She felt them now, and more, she felt a deep humility, and she felt a genuine respect for Randerson—a respect which more than counterbalanced her former repugnance toward him for the killing of Pickett. For she knew that a while ago, if she had had a pistol with her, she would have killed Chavis and Kester without hesitation.