It was the pictured face of Kathryn Verrill!
He did not say anything; neither did he move.... If you come to think of it, those who sustain great shocks seldom do anything unusual except in novels. In real life people cry out and exclaim over trifles; but let a really stupendous thing happen, and you may be very sure that they will be proportionately silent. The mind, incapable of instantly grasping the magnitude of what has happened, makes one to stand immovable and in silence.
Keith said nothing. His breathing was quite as regular as usual, and his grasp on the picture was firm—untrembling. Yet in that instant of time he had received the greatest shock of his life, and myriad thoughts were running through his brain with the swiftness of the waters in the mining sluice. He held the bit of pasteboard so long that Williston at last looked up at him inquiringly.
When he handed it back his mind was made up. He knew what must be done. He knew what he must do—at once—for her sake.
When two or three hours later he heard Williston’s regular breathing coming from the bed across the room, he stole out in the darkness to the shed where the horses and buckboard were. It was their one vehicle of any sort, and the only means they had of reaching the valley. With the team gone, Williston would practically be a prisoner for several days. Keith had no hesitation in deciding which way his duty lay. It was thirty miles to the nearest town; to the telegraph; to Gloria Howard; to the railroad!
As he pulled the buckboard out of the shed and put the horses before it, the first raindrops began to fall. Big splashing drops they were, puncturing the parched dust as they beat down upon it. Flashes of lightning split the heavens, and each flash made the earth—for the instant—noon-bright. When he had buckled the last strap his hands tightened on the reins, and he swung himself up to the seat as the thunder’s batteries were turned loose on the earth in a tremendous volley that set the very ground trembling. The frightened horses, crouching, swerved aside an instant, and then leaped forward into the darkness. Along the winding road they swept, like part of the wild storm, toward the town that lay off in the darkness of the valley below.
It was past midnight, and thirty miles lay between him and the railroad. There was no time to spare. He drove the horses at a pace which kept time with his whirlwind thoughts and his pulses.
He had been cool and his thoughts had been collected when under another’s possible scrutiny. Now, alone, with the midnight storm about him, his brain was whirling, and a like storm was coursing through his veins.
The crashing thunder that had seemed like an avalanche of boulders shattered and flung earthward by the fury of the storm, began to spend itself, and close following on the peals and flashes came the earth-scent of rain-wetted dust as the big drops came down. By and by the thunder died away in distant grumbling, and the fiery zigzags went out. There was the sound of splashing hoofs pounding along the road; and the warm, wet smell of horses’ steaming hides, blown back by the night wind.