Brent was lying under the spruces, drowsing with fatigue, reaction, and loss of blood. Miss Clitheroe sat by watching him. These fine beings have an exquisitely tenacious vitality. The happiness of release had suddenly kindled all her life again. As she rose to meet me, there was light in her eyes and color in her cheeks. Her whole soul leaped up and spoke its large gratitude in a smile.
“My dear friend,” she said; and then, with sudden tearfulness, “God be thanked for your heroism!”
“God be thanked!” I repeated. “We have been strangely selected and sent,—you from England, my friend and I, and my horse, the hero of the day, from the Pacific,—to interfere here in each other’s lives.”
“It would seem romance, but for the sharp terror of this day, coming after the long agony of my journey with my poor, errant father.”
“A sharp terror, indeed!”
“But only terror!” and a glow of maidenly thankfulness passed over her face. “Except one moment of rough usage, when I slipped away my gag and screamed as they carried me off, those men were considerate to me. They never halted except to dig a well in the sand of a riverbed. I learned from their talk that they had made an attempt to steal your horses in the night, and, failing, dreaded lest you, and especially Mr. Brent, would follow them close. So they rode hard. They supposed that, when I was found missing, whoever went in pursuit, and you they always feared, would lose time along the emigrant road, searching eastward.”
“We might have done so; but we had ourselves ridden off that way in despair of aiding you,”—and I gave her a sketch of the events of the morning.
“It was the hope of succor from you that sustained me. After what your friend said to me last evening, I knew he could not abandon me, if he had power to act.” And she looked very tenderly at the sleeper,—a look to repay him for a thousand wounds.
“Did you find my glove?” she asked.
“He has it. That token assured us. Ah! you should have seen that dear wounded boy, our leader, when he knew we were not astray.”