Perhaps not sixty seconds had elapsed after the first cry, when the lawyer succeeded in checking his horse without throwing him headlong, swung his foot out of the stirrup, and attempted to spring to the ground. But just then there was a sudden rush over the rock; a wierd and unnatural sweeping by, something like that of the Demon Hunt in "Der Freischutz;" a cry of terror and fright that seemed to come from the whole line in the rear and fill the air with ghastly sound; a closing of the eyes on the part of the incapable guardian, in the full belief that the noises he heard were those of the accomplishment of the great horror; then sounds nearer him, and a jar that almost prostrated himself and the horse against which he yet leaned; then a wild cry of exultation and delight which seemed—God help his senses!—was he going mad?—to be mingled with the clapping of hands like that which follows a moment of intense interest at the theatre!
Then silence, and the lawyer opened his eyes as suddenly as he had closed them. And what did he see? On the rock, nothing; in the path, ahead of him, Clara Vanderlyn still sitting her horse, though in a half fainting state, and Halstead Rowan, also on horseback, ahead of her, and with his hand holding her bridle!
Of course Horace Townsend, at that moment of doubt whether he stood upon his head or his heels—whether he had gone stark mad or retained a fair measure of sanity—whether the earth yet revolved in its usual orbit or had gone wandering off into cometary space, beyond all physical laws—of course at that moment he could not know precisely what had occurred to produce that sudden and singular change; and he could only learn, the moment after, from those who had been on the higher ground behind at the moment of the peril. According to their explanations, at the moment when they all saw the danger with a shudder and a holding of the very breath, Rowan had been heard to utter a single exclamation: "Well, I swear!" (a rough phrase, and one that he should by no means have used; but let his Western life and training entitle him to some consideration)—dashed spurs into the side of his horse—crowded by the five or six who preceded him, in a path considered impassable for more than one horse at a time—and then, with a wild Indian cry that he apparently could not restrain, spurred up the side of the rock, between Clara Vanderlyn and the verge of the precipice, certainly where the off feet of his horse could not have been thirty inches from the slippery edge, and literally jerked her horse and herself off into the path by the impetus of his own animal outside and the sudden grip which he closed upon her bridle as he went by, himself coming down into the path ahead, and neither unseated! Miss Vanderlyn's pony had struck the lawyer's horse as he came down in his enforced flying leap; and thus were explained all the sights, sounds, and physical events of that apparently supernatural moment.
The scene which followed, only a few moments after, when the leading members of the cavalcade (Clara Vanderlyn in the midst of it, supported by Rowan, who managed to keep near her)—the scene which followed, we say, when they reached a little plateau where the company had room to gather, will not be more easily effaced from the memory of those who were present than the terrible danger which had just preceded it. The overstrung nerves of the poor girl gave way at that point, and she dropped from her horse in a swoon, just as Halstead Rowan (singular coincidence!) had slipped from the saddle and was ready to catch her as she fell! What more natural than that in falling and being caught, she should have thrown her arms round the stout neck of the Illinoisan? And what more inevitable than that he should have been a considerable time in getting ready to lay her down upon the horse-blankets that had been suddenly pulled off and spread for her,—and that finally, the clinging grasp still continuing, he should have dropped himself on one corner of the blanket and furnished the requisite support to her head and shoulders?
Frank Vanderlyn and those who had been farthest behind with him came up at that moment; and Horace Townsend, if no one else, detected the sullen frown that gathered on his brow as he saw his sister lying in the arms of the man whom he had so grossly insulted. But if he frowned he said nothing, very prudently; for it is indeed not sure that it would have been safe, just then, for an emperor, there present, to speak an ill word to the hero of the day.
Be all this as it may, the usual authorial affidavit may be taken that Halstead Rowan retained Clara Vanderlyn, brother or no brother in the way, in his arms until some one succeeded in obtaining water from a clear deposit of rain among the rocks; that no one—not even one of the ladies—attempted to dispossess him of his newly-acquired human territory; that when the water had been brought, and she first gave token of the full return of consciousness, she did so by clasping her arms around Rowan's neck (of course involuntarily) and murmuring words that sounded to Townsend and some others near, like: "You saved me! How good and noble you are!" and that even under that temptation he did not kiss her, as he would probably have sacrificed both arms and a leg or two, but not his manliness, to do.
It was a quarter of an hour after, when Miss Vanderlyn, sufficiently and only sufficiently recovered to ride, was placed once more in the saddle and the cavalcade took its way more slowly down the mountains. The scenery, under the western sun, was even more lovely than that of the morning, the mists had all rolled away from every point of the compass, and there were some views Franconia-wards that they had entirely missed in the ascent. But there was scarcely one of the company who had not been so stirred to the very depths of human sympathy, by the event of the preceding half-hour, that inanimate nature, however wondrously beautiful, was half forgotten. So quickly, in those summer meetings and partings, do we grow attached to those with whom we are temporarily associated, especially amid the surroundings of the sublime and beautiful,—that had that fair girl lost her life so strangely and sadly, not one of all who saw the accident but would have borne in mind through life, in addition to the inevitable horror of the recollection, a memory like that of losing a dear and valued friend. And yet many of them had never even spoken to her, and perhaps only one in the whole cavalcade (her brother) had known of her existence one week before!
Even as it was, there were not a few of that line of spectators from whose eyes the vision of what might have been, failed to fade out with the moment that witnessed it. Some of them dreamed, for nights after, (or at least until another occurrence then impending dwarfed the recollection) not only of seeing the young girl sitting helpless on that perilous rock, but of beholding her arms raised to heaven in agony and the feet of her horse pawing the air, as both disappeared from sight over the precipice. Some may still dream of the event, in lonely night-hours following days of trouble and anxiety.
In the new arrangements for descending the mountains, made after the recovery of Clara Vanderlyn, Horace Townsend was not quite discarded, but he could not avoid feeling that very little dependence was placed upon his escort. It was of course as a mere jest, but to the sensitive mind of the lawyer there seemed to be a dash of malicious earnest at the bottom,—that Rowan took the first occasion as he passed near him, immediately after the young girl had been removed from his arms, to give him a forcible punch in the ribs, with the accompanying remark:
"Bah! I told you that you couldn't ride; but I had no idea that you could not do any better at taking care of a woman, than that!"