Hopeless, but not to be submitted to without a struggle. He would neither sit apathetic nor frantic, nor turn the gun on himself. Hope had gone as a matter of reasoning; but something had taken its place which in power transcended hope—cold rage, and a savage, defiant hatred for that deadly, silent trap; a rage such as he seldom had felt before, which urged him to tear and rend the sands as though they were a sentient enemy. Hope, living in him, had been faint-hearted when he thought of how ghastly the thing was; how he, a man with all a man's strength of body and mind and will, mounted on the finest horse for hundreds of miles, armed with a weapon, the use of which no man knew better; how he could not do a thing to save his life. What is hope but a wish? But the dynamic rage which crept through him was a force of another kind—defiant, savage determination to cheat the workings of that mobile bed of horror, or go down to a death made glorious by the fight.
He shook his fist at it. His thin lips drew back over set teeth in a snarl primitive in its timbre and in the savage nature behind it "D—n you! You may win; but I'll make that winnin' hard!"
Gripping the pommel he climbed up onto the saddle and poised for the leap. Could he believe his ears? Glancing around, he saw a woman tearing down the valley toward him, the drumming roll of her horse's pounding hoofs growing ever louder. What a sound! What music ever was so sweet? What sight had ever been so beautiful as that trim figure mounted astride a horse which seemed to spurn the grass in its arrowy flight? Hatless her hair streaming behind her like a glorious battle flag of Hope, came Margaret, and her voice rang out like a trumpet.
"Wait!"
Hope returned again to bulwark Rage and give Determination a better footing and stronger lever.
"Pepper Girl," choked Johnny, "I'm glad I waited. There's mebby many a mile we'll do together, better friends than ever. I'm tellin' you that if there's any way outside of h—l to get you out of this, yo're goin'. Hear me, little hoss? An' that thoroughbred girl has brought us th' way. Cheer up—we're goin' out, you an' me. But we'll have bad dreams—plumb bad dreams—for many a night to come." He suddenly raised a warning hand. "Look out!" he shouted. "Don't come too close!"
"I know this grisly thing like a book," she replied. "What shall I do?"
"Don't come too close!"
"This is the edge; tell me what to do!" She looked at Lang's partly submerged body and shuddered.
"Hold your cayuse fast by th' reins an' get off, so I can put my rope around that pommel. But I'm afraid it's a little too far," he replied, swinging the braided lariat carefully around his head. She quickly obeyed, but led the horse to another point on the edge, and gained a few inches. The rope shot out and up, struck the saddle and then the sands. Jerking it back again, he coiled it carefully, and then looked up, and nodded. Margaret was holding to the pommel with one hand and leaning out over the sands, her other arm extended toward him. The second cast went over her wrist and she caught the rope, drew back to the saddle and made the loop fast around her pommel.