d?

Blind, unreasoning terror filled Billy Louise. She struck Blue again
and plunged into the icy creek-crossing near the stable. She stopped
there just long enough to see how empty and desolate it was, and how
the horses and cattle had huddled against its sheltering wall out of
the biting winds; and how the door was shut and fastened so that they
could not get in. She opened it and looked in, and shut it again.
Then she turned and ran, white-faced, to the cabin. Where was Ward?
What had happened to Ward? Thief or honest man, treacherous or
true--what had happened to him?

Billy Louise saw the doorstep banked over with old, crusted snow. Her
heart gave a jump and stopped still. She felt her knees shake under
her. Her face seemed to pinch together, the flesh clinging close to
the bones. Her whole being seemed to contract with the deadly fear
that gripped her. It was like that chill morning when she had crept
out of her cot and gone over to mommie's bed and had lifted mommie's
hand that was hanging down....

She came to herself; she was running up the creek, away from the cabin.
Running and stumbling over rocks, and getting tripped with her
riding-skirt. She stopped, as soon as she realized what she was doing;
she stopped and stood with her hands pressed hard against each side of
her face, forcing herself to calmness again--or at least to sanity.
She had to go back. She told herself so, many times. "You've got to
go back!" she repeated, as if to a second person. "You can't be such a
fool; you've got to go back. And you've got to go inside. You've got
to do it."

So Billy Louise went back to the cabin, slowly, with shaking legs and a
heart that fluttered and stopped, fluttered and jumped and stopped, and
made her stagger as she walked. She reached the doorstep and stood
there with her palms pressing hard against her cheeks again. "You've
got to do it. You've got to!" she whispered to herself commandingly.

She never doubted that Ward was inside. She thought she would find him
dead--dead and horrible, perhaps. No other solution seemed to fit the
circumstances. He was in there, dead. He had been dead for some time,
because there were no saddle-marks on Rattler, and because the snow was
crusted over the doorstep with never a mark to break its smooth
roundness. She had to go in. She was the person who must find him and
do what she could. She must do it, because he was Ward--her Ward.

It took c