"You were not cumbered with a horse that had lost its head. There is a little slack close to the bank," she said.
The man turned and seemed by his attitude to be gazing at her in astonishment.
"You can't suppose I should have scrambled out alone?" he said.
There was a suggestion of anger in his voice which Grace recognized as wholly genuine. She had met and formed her own opinion of the protestations of not a few young men in her time, and it was evident to her that, while Ingleby's attitude became him, he did not recognize the fact.
"You felt yourself responsible then?" she suggested.
"No," said the man slowly. "I certainly didn't; though it's clear that I was. I don't think I felt anything except that—you—were in the rapid."
This was also evidently perfectly sincere, but he seemed to pull himself up abruptly, and laughed in a fashion that suggested embarrassment.
"You will not remember that little speech. It's not the kind of thing one is pleased with afterwards; but, in the circumstances, it was, perhaps, excusable," he said.
He gave her no opportunity for answering, but struck the cayuse, and they went on again. Still, Grace had noticed the tremor in his voice, and knew that he had meant exactly what he said. Nor was she displeased at it.
Then the thoughts and fancies which the moment of peril had galvanized into activity grew blurred again, and she was only sensible of the physical pain and weariness and an intolerable cold, as the man and beast stumbled on. Twice again they dipped to the river, which, however, scarcely rose to his knee, and after that there was only a sliding past of snow-dimmed trees, while by a grim effort she kept herself in the saddle. Then at last a light blinked in front of her through the filmy haze, the cayuse stopped, and Ingleby, it seemed, lifted her down. At least, she felt his arm about her, and then found herself standing beside him before the commissioner's dwelling without any very clear notion of how she came there. It was only afterwards she remembered, with tingling cheeks, how she had seen a miner walk away with a one-hundred-and-forty-pound bag of flour. Then they went into a lighted room together, and stood still, gasping, a moment, with a distressful dizziness creeping over both of them. Ingleby apparently roused himself with an effort, and threw the door open.