It was as the girl realized this and the blood seemed bursting through the pores of her skin with the thought, the question, as to what she should do when her gallop did bring her up with the riders, that the stream suddenly burst into a jeer ... an awful jeer.
“Don’t you remember that there’s a ‘washout’ ahead,” it said, “where I, the water, swung in, some time ago, and ate back into the road: now, there’s no road there, but a steep bank, a wild bank—clumps of sod ... and Una can’t keep her seat?”
The blood rushed back upon the girl rider’s heart now. Horrible sounds were in her ears, as of a hurricane raging around her on a darkened mountain as, standing in her stirrups, cowering forward, she whipped Revelation on—coaxed him, by his love for her, on—brave Revelation, coming up after them as tight as he could.
She saw that eaten-out bank descend at an angle of fifty degrees, its snaring sod-clumps, wild bushes—girlish feet had once climbed it breathlessly from below.
“Una could never stick on ... and the woman is mad enough to force her down it.... And can I hold them back?”
But out of the hurricane came the still small Voice: “You are not alone,” it said. “On this desperate ride you are not two—and one lagging far behind—but Three. One is, surely, with you who was with Una when she sent that message.”
“But I can’t even r-reach them,” Pemrose was sobbing, a moment later, setting her teeth, for though Revelation was gaining, “coming up tight”, it was not tight enough; that breakdown in the road was very near—that chewed-out pit-bank.
“Father-r in—heaven!” The cry could not reach the girlish lips. The figures ahead were but twenty feet from the washout—the deformity of one plainly emphasized as she bent forward in the saddle, dragging Revel by the lead strap—Revel with the martyred wabble, the neck so forlornly straight.
Una—Una realized what was before her now. She was rocking, too, rocking fiercely, even striking out at her captor, putting up a fight—ineffectual. But....
Was the rock near her suddenly cleft—the great rock above the brawling stream?