The amber dawn gave place to clear day. The sun climbed high in the heavens. It was noon when the buckskin picked its way through the East Walker River to the west bank.
The boy could go no farther. He slid down, tied the horse, and staggered to the water. An odd lightheaded feeling lifted him from the ground, it seemed. He floated, imponderable, on waves of air resonant with music. Then he passed out of all sensation whatever into unconsciousness.
He came to life again placidly and without energy. When he roused himself to think about it his body was singularly inert. It was almost as though it were a thing apart from himself, did not belong to him at all. He tried heavily with his hand to brush away the cobwebs from his mind. Then slowly he remembered what had taken place.
The buckskin was still standing patiently beside the willow to which he had tied it. The sun was beginning to slant from the west.
Slowly he undressed himself in part, washed the wound with clean water, and tied it up with a bandage torn from his clothing. His fever was high, and he bathed his face in the cold water fresh from the mountain snows.
He was in no condition to travel, but he knew he would have to stick to the saddle till he reached a settlement. Even if the Indians had given up the chase, he could not lie here without food, shelter, or attention to his wound. When he rose to drag himself to the horse it took all his grit to set his teeth on the pain that went through him like a knife thrust. He could not hold his body erect without agony.
Somehow he reached the buckskin and pulled himself to the saddle. He held the pony to a walk, because this jolted his side less than any other gait. His mind refused to consider the long hours he must spend on the rack of torture. Every moment was sufficient to itself. He would set landmarks for himself. That scrub cottonwood by the river must be passed. When that had been reached a bunch of greasewood ahead became his goal. So, mile by mile, in a growing delirium, he kept going till he was far up in the Pine Nut Range.
He lost count of time and of distance. He forgot where he was travelling or why. He remembered only Indians, and the fear he had resolutely repressed—which no doubt had been uppermost all the time in the boy’s subconscious mind—expressed itself in the babbling of his delirious talk.
“They’re roostin’ up there in the hills somewheres. Sure are. Want my topknot for to decorate their tepees. Hump yoreself, you Nevada Jim. I feel right spindlin’, an’ I want Mother to fix me up some sage tea. . . . They’re after me full jump. See ’em come lickety split. Aimin’ to scalp me, all on account that I didn’t stop to say ‘Howdy.’ ” His laughter jangled in the empty desert, fear for the moment forgotten. “We ce’tainly lit a-runnin’, me an’ you, Jim, when we jumped up them Piutes. Clumb for the tall timber, didn’t we, amigo viego? . . . Never did see mountains dance before. S’lute yore pardners. Grand right an’ left. Alemane . . . Here the devils come, hell for leather. Better not crawl our humps, eh, Jim? We’ll sure show ’em what for.”
It was the buckskin that saved him, that and the terror which had become an obsession. He clung to the saddle desperately, long after he no longer knew the reason for it, long after he had ceased to guide his mount. Just before nightfall the horse took him to a Mormon ranch.