They sealed their pact with a silent embrace. De Spain turned to Duke. “You are the witness of this marriage, Duke. You will see, if an accident happens, that anything, everything I have––some personal property––my father’s old ranch north of Medicine Bend––some little money in bank at Sleepy Cat––goes to my wife, Nan Morgan de Spain. Will you see to it?”
“I will. And if it comes to me––you, de Spain, will see to it that what stock I have in the Gap goes to my niece, Nan, your wife.”
She looked from one to the other of the two men. “All that I have,” she said in turn, “the lands in the Gap, everywhere around Music Mountain, go to you two equally together, or whichever survives. And if you both live, and I do not, remember my last message––bury the past in my grave.”
Duke Morgan tested the cinches of the saddle on the Lady once more, unloosed the tugs once more from the horse’s shoulder, examined each buckle of the collar and every inch of the two 418 strips of leather, the reinforced fastenings on the whiffletree, rolled all up again, strapped it, and stood by the head till de Spain swung up into the saddle. He bent down once to whisper a last word of cheer to his wife and, without looking back, headed the Lady into the storm.
CHAPTER XXXIII
GAMBLING WITH DEATH
Beyond giving his horse a safe headway from the shelter, de Spain made little effort to guide her. He had chosen the Lady, not because she was fresher, for she was not, but because he believed she possessed of the three horses the clearest instinct to bring her through the fight for the lives that were at stake. He did not deceive himself with the idea he could do anything to help the beast find a way to succor; that instinct rested wholly in the Lady’s head, not in his. He only knew that if she could not get back to help, he could not. His own part in the effort was quite outside any aid to the Lady––it was no more than to reach alive whatever aid she could find, that he might direct it to where Nan and her companion would endure a few hours longer the fury of the storm.
His own struggle for life, he realized, was with the wind––the roaring wind that hurled its broadsides of frozen snow in monstrous waves across the maddened sky, challenging every living thing. 420 It drove icy knives into his face and ears, paralyzed in its swift grasp his muscles and sinews, fought the stout flow of blood through his veins, and searched his very heart to still it.