dulously--

"_You_, Dickie? Oh, Dickie, Dickie, it's--_you_?"

CHAPTER XIV

SHEILA AND THE STARS

Hilliard's first messenger had been hindered by death. Several times it
seemed that his second messenger would suffer the same grim prevention.
But this second messenger was young and set like steel to his purpose. He
left the railroad at Millings, hired a horse, crossed the great plain
above the town and braved the Pass, dangerous with overbalanced weights
of melting snow. There, on the lonely Hill, he had his first encounter
with that Arch-Hinderer. A snow-slide caught him and he left his horse
buried, struggling out himself from the cold smother like a maimed insect
to lie for hours by the road till breath and life came back to him. He
got himself on foot to the nearest ranch, and there he hired a fresh
horse and reached Rusty, at the end of the third day.

Rusty was overshadowed by a tragedy. The body of the trapper, Hilliard's
first messenger, had been found under the melting snow, a few days
before, and to the white-faced young stranger was given that stained and
withered letter in which Hilliard had excused and explained his
desertion.

Nothing, at Rusty, had been heard of Sheila. No one knew even that she
had ever left Miss Blake's ranch--the history of such lonely places is a
sealed book from snowfall until spring. Their tragedies are as dumb as
the tragedies of animal life. No one had ever connected Sheila's name
with Hilliard's. No one knew of his plans for her. The trapper had set
off without delay, not even going back to his house, some little distance
outside of Rusty, to tell his wife that he would be bringing home a
lodger with him. There was, to be sure, at the office a small bundle of
letters all in the same hand addressed to Miss Arundel. They had to wait,
perforce, till the snow-bound country was released.

"It's not likely even now," sly and twinkling Lander of the hotel told
Dickie, "that you can make it to Miss Blake's place. No, sir, nor to
Hilliard's neither. Hidden Creek's up. She's sure some flood this time of
the year. It's as much as your life's good for, stranger."

But Dickie merely smiled and got for himself a horse that was "good in
deep water." And he rode away from Rusty without looking back.

He rode along a lush, wet land of roaring streams, and, on the bank of
Hidden Creek, there was a roaring that drowned even the beating of his
heart. The flood straddled across his p