Delilah of the Snows

by Harold Bindloss

He wrenched at the bridle; but Grace had faint misgivings as they floundered on again. Sault in that country implies a fall or rapid, and the one in question was called after a prospector who had drowned himself and a comrade there. It swept down to the mouth of the cañon in a wild white rush, studded with great boulders that bruised and scarred the pines the flood hurled down on them; and what made it more perilous in the dark was the fact that the trail dipped to the brink of the smaller rapids at the tail of it. Indeed, it was often necessary to splash knee-deep through the slack of them along the shore; and Alison had come by his death through mistaking the big sault for one of the smaller ones on a black night. The man who fished him out of an eddy a week later said that Alison looked very much as though he had been put through a threshing mill.

It was, Grace fancied, half an hour later when they floundered down a declivity, with the roar of the river growing louder in their ears. It was with difficulty she kept in the saddle, and she was vaguely conscious that her skirt was rent to tatters, though she was too stiff and cold to trouble about that now. Even in the thicker timber the snow was almost bewildering, and it was only now and then she could see Ingleby scrambling and floundering in front of her. He was evidently making his course by sound, for there was nothing that she could discern to guide him.

Then somehow they slid down a bank, and there was a splash that told her the cayuse was in the water. Ingleby seemed to be struggling with the beast, but she could not make out why he did so. Nor did it seem of any moment. She was dazed and bewildered and intolerably cold. There was a further splashing, a plunge, and a flounder; the water rose to her stirrup, and for a few horrible moments she felt that the beast was going downstream with her. It was evident by the depth that they were in the Sault. She fancied she cried out in her terror and that Ingleby shouted in answer, but the roar of the river drowned the sound. In another few seconds, however, the horse apparently struck rock with its hoofs again; then the water that had lapped about her skirt seemed to fall away, and in a frantic scrambling Ingleby dragged the pony up the bank. The cayuse stood still, trembling, at the top of it, and Ingleby was apparently quivering, too, for his voice shook a little as he answered her half-coherent questions.

"Alison's Sault!" he said hoarsely. "It should have been behind us. I never recognized it until the river swept my feet from under me. I suppose I was dazed by the snow."

Grace sat silent a moment. She knew that they had looked death in the face, for nothing made of flesh and blood could carry the life in it through the mad turmoil of rock and flood in Alison's Sault. The roar of the river was very impressive now, and the man's voice had shown that he was shaken by some strong emotion which was not personal fear. Then, as the crash of a great pine against a stream-swept stone rang through the deep reverberations, she bent down and touched his shoulder. The contact was momentary, but she felt a little quiver run through him.

"Nobody could have recognized it on such a night. It was not your fault," she said.

"I can't forgive myself. The cayuse got out of hand—I couldn't hold him. He was heading out into the stream. If that ledge hadn't been there——"

He stopped with a gasp, and Grace was glad to recognize that of the two she was the one who showed less concern. She guessed what he was feeling, but could not restrain the desire to make certain.

"Well," she said. "If the shelf of rock had not been there?"

Ingleby turned and seemed to be listening to the river. Perhaps he did it unconsciously, but the hoarse roar of the flood among the boulders was sufficient answer.