Jim was left to round up the mare.
Blanche’s discovery came quickly. There it was, huddled and still, lying under the lea of an up-standing rock, perilously adjacent to where the rippling surface of the lagoon lapped against the stone. She dropped upon her knees. She set her arms about the poor limp body, and raised it so that she could gaze into the ashen face of the girl she had come to love so deeply. It was Molly. It was Molly looking like death, and wholly unconscious.
What had happened? Why was Molly here at these headwaters, so far from her home? Had her pinto fallen with her? And what had she been doing here at the water’s edge?
Blanche glanced up at the sound of Jim’s approach over the stones.
“I’m not sure she isn’t—dead,” she said, in hushed tones.
“Not—dead!”
There was that in the man’s voice Blanche had never heard before. In a moment he was kneeling beside her, studying the death-like face. The eyes were half closed, and looked fixed and utterly lifeless. The lips were without colour. The gently swelling bosom was still—so ominously still.
“There’s a bruise, but no cut,” he said, indicating her forehead, and shaking his white head. “That wouldn’t have killed her. No.”
He picked up one of the girl’s limp arms. He raised it. Then he laid it down again with infinite gentleness. Again he shook his head.
“She’s not dead,” he said emphatically.