“The river,” said Hetty. “Hold fast! There’s a piece like a toboggan-leap quite near.”
She flung herself backwards as the lace-like birch twigs smote her furs; and when one of the horses stumbled Miss Schuyler with difficulty stifled a cry. The beast, however, picked up its stride again, there was a lurch, and the rocking sleigh appeared to leap clear of the snow. A crash followed, and they were flying out of the shadow again across a strip of faintly shining plain with another belt of dusky trees rolling back towards them. Beyond them, low in the soft indigo, a pale star was shining. Hetty glanced at it as she shook the reins, and once more something in her laugh stirred Miss Schuyler.
“I know when that star comes out,” she said. “If Larry’s only there we can warn him and make our ride on time.”
In another minute they were in among the trees, and Hetty, springing down, plodded through the loose snow at the horses’ heads, urging them with hand and voice up the incline which wound tortuously into the darkness. Now and then, one of them stumbled, and there was a great trampling of hoofs, but the girl’s mittened hand never loosed its grasp; and it was with a little breathless run she clutched the sleigh and swung herself in when the team swept out on the level again. Still, at least a minute had passed before she had the horses in hand. The trail forked again somewhere in the dimness they were flashing through, and it was difficult to see the dusky smear at all.
A lurch that flung Miss Schuyler against her showed that Hetty had found the turning; and a little later, with a struggle, she checked the team, and they slid behind one of the low, rolling rises that seamed the prairie here and there. There was no wind in the hollow behind it and a great stillness under the high vault of blue studded with twinkling stars. The dim whiteness of a long ridge cut sharply against it, and the pale colouring and frosty glitter conveyed the suggestion of pitiless cold. Flora Schuyler shivered, and drew the furs closer round her.
“Is this the place?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Hetty, with a little gasp. “If we don’t meet him here he will have passed or gone by the other trail, and it will be too late to stop him. Can you hear anything, Flo?”
Miss Schuyler strained her ears, but, though the horses were walking now, she could hear nothing. The deep silence round them was emphasized by the soft trample of the hoofs and thin jingle of steel that seemed unreal and out of place there in the wilderness of snow and stars.
“No,” she said, in a strained voice; “I can hear nothing at all. It almost makes one afraid to listen.”
They drove slowly for a minute or two, and then Hetty pulled up the team. “I can’t go on, and it is worse to stand still,” she said. “Flo, if he didn’t stop—and he wouldn’t—they would shoot him. He must be coming. Listen. There’s a horrible buzzing in my ears—I can’t hear at all.”