Lon and his employer were already at work on them. Three of the animals had pawed and kicked till they were back on their feet. The men helped them back to the road, after unhitching them from the sled. It was necessary to dig the fourth horse out of a deep drift into which it had been flung.
Betty sat beside Hollister in the wagon bed on a pile of salvaged blankets. She felt strangely weak and shaken. It was as though the strength had been drained out of her by the emotional stress through which she had passed. To be flung starkly against the chance, the probability, that Tug was dead had been a terrible experience. The shock had struck her instantly, vitally, with paralyzing force. She leaned against the side of the bed laxly, trying to escape from the harrowing intensity of her feeling. That she could suffer so acutely, so profoundly, was a revelation to her.
What was the meaning of it? Why had the strength and energy ebbed from her body as they do from one desperately wounded? It was disturbing and perplexing. She had not been that way when her father was shot. Could she find the answer to the last question in the way she had put it? Desperately wounded! Had she, until hope flowed back into her heart, been that?
“You’re ill,” she heard a concerned, far-away voice say. “It’s been too much for you.”
She fought against a wave of faintness before she answered. “I suppose so. It’s—silly of me. But I’m all right now.”
“It’s no joke to be buried in an avalanche. Hello! Look there!”
Her gaze followed the direction in which he was pointing, the edge of the bluff above. Two men were looking down from the place where the slide had started. It was too far to recognize them, but one carried a rifle. They stood there for a minute or two before they withdrew.
“Do you think—that they—?”
His grave eyes met hers. “I think they attempted murder, and, thank God! failed.”
“Don’t say anything to Dad—not now,” she cautioned.