"They'll help us. I'm a woman."
"All the more reason—" he conquered his growing weakness, and put what force he could into his voice. "Jacqueline, I forbid you to go! Come here!"
She obeyed, wringing her hands. "But I don't know what to do for you!" she quavered.
"Listen! I must walk as far as I can, and when I'm done, you leave me, and run ahead for help. We can't be far from our own cabin now."
Channing had resumed his manhood, and it did not occur to the girl to argue with him. He was not a coward. He had merely been startled momentarily out of his self-control, unaccustomed as he was to physical danger. She realized this thankfully. The literary life does not prepare a man for the emergency of finding himself a target for bullets out of the dark.
Arm-in-arm they stumbled along the ravine. Soon he was obliged to lay an arm across her sturdy young shoulders, leaning upon her more heavily with each step. She felt the effort of his every motion, was aware of the labored breath with which he fought back his weakness. Still he struggled on. If she had loved him before, she adored him now.
"Oughtn't I to bandage it, or something?"
"No," he gasped. "It's not an artery, I think. Must get on. Almost done."
She was terrified. All the tenderness she had denied him that night rose in her, an overwhelming flood. As he faltered she urged him forward with crooning words, with caresses. "Just a little farther, that's my brave dear! We're almost there. It can't be far now, darling, beloved, my precious!"
He grew too faint to understand her words, but her will toward the last carried him on, step by step, she staring desperately at the skyline, looking for the cornfield that was to be her landmark.—Could they have passed it? Surely they had not come so long a way as this?