It took only another moment or two to wrap the thick driving robe about him, and after that she glanced down, with one hand still beneath his neck. It was clear that he was quite unconscious of her presence, and stooping swiftly she kissed his grey face. Then she settled herself in the driving seat with only a blanket coat to shelter her from the stinging frost, and the horses went cautiously down the slope. She did not urge them until they reached the level, for the trail that wound up out of the ravine was difficult, but when the wide white expanse once more stretched away before them she laid the biting whip across their backs.
That was quite sufficient. They were fiery beasts, and when they broke into a furious gallop the rush of night wind that screamed by struck her tingling cheeks like a lash of wires. Then all power of feeling went out of her hands, her arms grew stiff and heavy, and she was glad that the trail led smooth and straight to the horizon. Hawtrey, who had moved a little, lay, a shapeless figure, across her feet, but he answered nothing when she spoke to him.
The team went far at the gallop, and the beat of hoofs rose up, dulled a little, in a wild staccato drumming. There was an insistent crunching beneath the runners, and a fine mist of snow beat against the sleigh, but the girl leaning forward, a tense figure, with nerveless hands clenched upon the reins, saw nothing but the blue-grey riband of trail that steadily unrolled itself before her. At length, however, a blurred mass, which she knew to be a birch bluff, grew out of the white waste, and presently a cluster of darker smudges shot up into the shape of a log-house, sod stables, and strawpile granary. A minute or two later, she pulled the team up with an effort, and a man, who flung the door of the house open, came out into the moonlight. He stopped, and apparently gazed at her in astonishment.
"Miss Creighton!" he said.
"Don't stand there," said Sally. "Take the near horse's head, and lead them right up to the door."
"What's the matter?" the man asked stupidly.
"Lead the team up," said Sally. "Jump, if you can."
It was supposed on that part of the prairie that Sproatly had never moved with much expedition in his life, but that night he sprang towards the horses at a commanding wave of the girl's hand. He started when he saw his comrade lying in the bottom of the sleigh, but Sally disregarded his hurried questions.
"Help me to get him out," she said, when he stopped the team. "Keep his right leg as straight as you can. I don't want to lift him. We must slide him in."
They did it somehow, though the girl was breathless before their task, which the snow made a little easier, was finished, and the perspiration started from the man. Then Sally turned to the latter.