Up and up they went. It seemed as though they would remember for all their lives every treacherous inch of that trail along which they crawled as a fly crawls crookedly up a window-pane, and yet that they would never be able to find their way down again. Up and up—and there suddenly was John Herrick, lying on a narrow shelf of rock just below them, his white face turned upward to the sky, and the stones and tufts of grass about him stained with blood. Just ahead, at the turn of the trail, they could see his little tent, his various belongings heaped together, and the aimless, drifting smoke of his still smoldering camp fire.
Before Nancy could even cry out, Beatrice was down from her horse, down from the trail, and was kneeling beside him. A gash across the forehead was his most evident injury, but that could not account for all this blood. No, here on the under side of his arm, where the sleeve of his coat was torn away, this was the deeper wound from which had poured forth that crimson deluge that had soaked his clothes and stained the ground under him. Thanks to instructions that she had received long before, she knew what to do. But could she be quick enough? Might she not be too late? As she twisted her handkerchief, she tried to remember just what she had been told, where the knot was to come, just which spot was the proper one for the pressure.
Those first-aid lectures—it was only because every one else was going to them that she had attended at all. And she was rather bored by the time she had reached the third one, and prone to let her mind wander. With maddening clearness, she could recollect how she had looked out of the window, glanced at one girl’s hair-ribbon, decided she would have a dress like the one in front of her, and with only half her mind had listened to what the lecturer was saying. And now John Herrick’s chance of life was hanging on her memory! Nancy was standing beside her, helpless, horrified, unable to be of use until Beatrice should tell her how. She remembered now: she had found the artery where the pulse still beat feebly; she had arranged the pad to press against the bone; she was telling Nancy how to help her twist the bandage tight.
Slowly the trickle of blood lessened, came forth, at last, one drop at a time, and finally ceased altogether. It seemed a long, long wait before John Herrick opened his eyes.
“Was Dolly killed?” he asked first, and then, after a while, “How do you come to be here? Surely you never climbed that trail, you girls, alone?”
It was a grisly nightmare, their attempt to get him up to the level bench of ground where he had pitched his camp, but they managed it at last. One effort they made to lift him into Presto’s saddle, but it was attended with so little success and such evident agony, that they gave it up.
“There’s something broken—besides the cuts in my arm,” John Herrick muttered, and lapsed into unconsciousness as they managed to drag him under the shelter of his tent. They propped up his injured arm on a roll of blankets, replenished the fire, and sat down on each side of him to wait until he should rouse himself again.
Although it was high noon the sky was strangely dark, and even under the sheltering wall of the tent the air was growing very cold. Heavy masses of cloud were sailing across the overcast sky, and the mountains were taking on a strange, somber color that was so unfamiliar as to be terrifying.
Looking down, they saw that John Herrick had opened his eyes again and was staring up at them without moving. In answer to the unspoken question in Beatrice’s eyes, he began to explain very slowly, with long pauses for rest.
“I fell, very early in the morning, before the dawn, just as the storm was going by. I was riding recklessly in the dark. Poor Dolly knew we were in danger and hung back, but I urged her on. She slipped and I was flung clear, but I could not move. I could hear her scrambling and rolling and falling farther and farther below me, but I could not even turn my head. You say she was really still alive?”