When he lifted her, she sighed, and the unexpected assurance of life galvanized him. He laid her down and stumbled to the creek. He brought back a little water in his cupped hands and dropped it on her face, then he rubbed her forehead with his wet hands.
It did not bring her back to consciousness, but hope had him now, coupled with a definite purpose: to get her away as soon as possible, back to her home. It would not be possible to carry her through that network of briers, but if he made his way up the creek to where there was less undergrowth he could reach the pasture. Then he could get his horse.
It was no easy matter to carry her limp body and still keep a hand free for the lantern. He made his slow way around rocks, half the time wading in water, more than once almost falling. He was nearly exhausted by combined anxiety and exertion when circumstance favored him; he came to a wide path tracked by the cattle, an easy ascent. When he reached the pasture, he laid his burden down, put the lantern where it would serve as a guide for his return.
He skirted the undergrowth along the creek without much difficulty, avoided the brier-patch, and came to the rail fence, shortly above where his horse was tied. He took down a tier of rails that he might lead him through, and his return was even more rapid than his going.
To mount his horse with Ann laid across his shoulder taxed every muscle in his body, and to hold her inert weight half-seated before him and dragging over one arm while he kept one hand free to guide his horse took both strength and skill.
Baird found the Back Road by keeping, as nearly as he could judge, parallel with the Post-Road. With his horse's head turned homeward, his task was not so difficult, for the animal strode along the familiar way, needing no guidance. In his relief, Baird kissed Ann's upturned face. "It won't be long now," he whispered. In his stress he had forgotten the hole in the bridge; forgotten Edward; forgotten Garvin; forgotten every one but Ann; forgotten even himself.
Their entrance into the woods was like passing from a darkness in which objects could be sensed into the thicker blackness of a tunnel. Baird could tell where the road led off to the club only by the turn his horse made. He forced him to back and then urged him straight ahead. Once on the Penniman Road, the animal could be trusted to keep on. That he did keep on and with the lessened speed of the horse walking away from his stable was the only guarantee Baird had that they were going in the right direction.
In time they emerged from the tunnel, into what seemed, by contrast, a normality. Baird had loathed the palpable blackness that had shrouded Ann's vague outline; he had seemed to be embracing an unreality. When they neared the barn and a horse in the enclosure whinnied, it was like hearing a friendly voice. Baird forced his horse to circle the barn, started him on the road leading to the front of the house, which the animal took gladly because again headed for the club, and checked him before the vague black mass which was the house. There was no lighted window, no sign of anxiety or of welcome.
Baird dismounted and laid Ann gently on the grass. If there was any one in that apparently heartless house to whom he could entrust her, he would ride for a doctor. He left her on the grass—better that two should move her with the care two could give—and went to the living-room door. He knocked, then pounded, then called, and was answered by total silence.
A chill touched him; was the whole world dead? Where were they all at this hour of the night? He lighted a match and, for the first time that night, looked at his watch. It was only a few minutes after ten. Baird's disbelief was so complete that he put the watch to his ear, and even when he found it ticking steadily he could not credit what it had told him. It seemed to Baird that he had spent hours under the bridge and that he had agonized half the night over Ann. But there was one comfort, if his watch was right, Ann had not been unconscious half the night. And her family were probably simply out for the evening and would be back.