But Amy suddenly turned faint, and was unable to proceed.
"It's perfectly silly of me!" she cried indignantly. "The idea of my feeling faint! It makes me so angry!"
"It's perfectly natural," Bob told her. "I think you've shown a heap of nerve. Most girls would have flopped over."
The men helped her to a streamlet some hundreds of yards away. Here it was agreed that Ware should proceed in search of a conveyance; and that Bob and Amy should there await his return.
XXXVI
Ware disappeared rapidly up the dusty road, Bob and Amy standing side by side in silence, watching him go. When the lean, long figure of the old mountaineer had quite disappeared, and the light, eddying dust, peculiar to the Sierra country, had died, Amy closed her eyes, raised her hand to her heart, and sank slowly to the bank of the little creek. Her vivid colour, which had for a moment returned under the influence of her strong will and her indignation over her weakness, had again ebbed from her cheeks.
Bob, with an exclamation of alarm, dropped to her side and passed his arm back of her shoulders. As she felt the presence of his support, she let slip the last desperate holdings of physical command, and leaned back gratefully, breathing hard, her eyes still closed.
After a moment she opened them long enough to smile palely at the anxious face of the young man.