Garth forbore to question her further.
His impatience could scarcely brook the necessary pause to let the horses feed at noon. It was a camp of wretchedness; none of the three riders thought of eating. All the while the horses cropped, Garth strode ceaselessly up and down, biting his lips; while the white-faced boy, who had not spoken all morning, sat holding his bursting head between his hands; and Rina, crouching apart, gazed over the prairie with unseeing eyes.
Garth had it ever in mind to save the horses, but his impatience was incontrollable; he made them start too soon; and throughout the afternoon he urged them more than he knew. The animals failed visibly, hour by hour. It was more than three hours before they came upon the site of the noon camp of those ahead, showing that they were steadily losing in the chase.
To be obliged to stop again two hours short of darkness was a crushing disappointment to Garth; but the horses could go no farther. He could never have told how he curbed his impatience throughout that age-long night. He did not sleep: but an excess of suffering is in the end its own merciful opiate; and he was not always fully conscious.
With the morning a fresh blow awaited them. Daylight revealed Garth's mount lying dead of exhaustion fifty yards from camp. In a wide circle on the neighbouring heights, the coyotes were squatting on their haunches, waiting for the sure feast. It was colder than the day before; and the clouds hung thicker and lower. The three of them approached the dead animal, and looked down upon it stolidly.
Garth set his teeth, and laughed his harsh note. "I will walk," he said shortly. "I can keep going while you are spelling the horses."
Charley, for the first time, questioned a decision of his leader. "We can't spare an hour!" he said with a dull decisiveness, in which there was nothing boyish. "You have got to keep on ahead. Besides, you can't follow the tracks as well as I can, you would lose yourself. I will walk."
Of the two desperate expedients it was clearly the better; and Garth instantly acquiesced. Possessed by a master idea, he was incapable of feeling any great compunctions at the idea of the injured boy setting forth on the prairie alone—that would come later. At present he stood equally ready to sacrifice Charley, or himself, or all three of them together, if it would save Natalie.
The boy doggedly busied himself making a bundle of his blankets, and food enough to last him three days. The rest of his pack was added to the complaining backs of the other two horses.
Garth did not neglect to consider what he could do to ensure the boy's safety. "Better return to the shack," he urged. "You can do it in two marches. There's plenty of grub there."