Too exhausted for speech, Buck merely nodded, and the girl, gathering up Freckles’s bridle in her other hand, led the two horses slowly toward the trail. At the spring Buck drank deeply of the water she handed him, and seemed much refreshed.
“That’s good,” he murmured, with an effort to straighten his bent body. “Well, I reckon I’d better be starting. I—I can’t thank you enough for all 225 you’ve done, Miss—Thorne. It was mighty plucky—”
“You mustn’t waste your strength talking,” she interrupted quietly. “Just tell me which way to go, and we’ll start.”
“We?” he repeated sharply. “But you’re not going.”
“Of course I am. Did you think for a moment I’d let you take that ride alone?” She smiled faintly with a brave attempt at lightness. “You’d be falling off and breaking another rib. Please don’t make difficulties. I’m going with you, and that’s an end of it.”
Perhaps the firmness of her manner made Buck realize the futility of further protest, or possibly he was in no condition to argue. At all events he gave in, and when the girl swung herself into the saddle, the slow journey began.
To Mary Thorne the memory of it remained ever afterward in her mind a chaotic medley of strange emotions and impressions, vague yet vivid. At first, where the width of the trail permitted it, she rode beside him, making an effort to talk casually and lightly, yet not too constantly, but continually keeping a watchful eye on the drooping figure at her right, whose hands presently sought and gripped the saddle-horn.
When they left the trail for rougher ground, she 226 dismounted in spite of Buck’s protest, and walked beside him, and it was well she did. Once when the horse slipped or stumbled on a loose stone and the man’s body swayed perilously in the saddle, she put up both hands swiftly and held him there.
Before they had gone a mile her boots began to hurt her, but the pain was so trifling in comparison with what Buck must be suffering that she scarcely noticed it. He was putting up a brave front, but there were signs that were difficult to conceal, and toward the end of that toilsome journey it was evident that he could not possibly have kept his seat much longer. Indeed, when they had ridden the short length of the little cañon and stopped before the overhanging shelf of rocks, he toppled suddenly sidewise, and only the girl’s frail body prevented him from crashing roughly to the ground.
She brought him water from the spring, and searching through his belongings found a flask of brandy and forced some between his teeth. When he had recovered from his momentary faintness, she managed somehow to get him over to the blankets spread beneath the ledge. Then she built a fire and set some coffee on it to boil, unsaddled Pete, fed and watered the three horses, finally returning with a cup of steaming liquid to where Buck lay exhausted with closed eyes.