ted deep in some
hidden crevice, grew up before it, and, staring upward at it, the girl
guessed that to this little bush alone Buck owed his life. He had been
able to give her no further details of his descent, but she saw that it
would be possible for a man to crawl along the narrow ledge to where
another crossed it at a descending angle, and thence gain the bottom of
the gulch.

"I wonder how he ever came to fall," she murmured, remembering how wide
the trail was at the summit.

Returning, however, she asked no questions. In the face of what lay before
her, the matter seemed trivial and unimportant. She caught the Rocking-R
horse without much trouble and led him back to a broad, flat boulder on
which Buck had managed to crawl. Obliged to hold the animal, whose
slightest movement might prove disastrous, she could give no further aid,
but was forced to stand helpless, watching with troubled, sympathetic eyes
the man's painful struggles to gain the saddle. When at last he succeeded
and slumped there, mouth twisted and face bathed in perspiration, her
knees were shaking and she felt limp and nerveless.

"We'll stop at the spring first for more water," she said, pulling herself
together with an effort.

Too exhausted for speech, Buck merely nodded, and the girl, gathering up
Freckles's bridle in her other hand, led the two horses slowly toward the
trail. At the spring Buck drank deeply of the water she handed him, and
seemed much refreshed.

"That's good," he murmured, with an effort to straighten his bent body.
"Well, I reckon I'd better be starting. I--I can't thank you enough for
all you've done, Miss--Thorne. It was mighty plucky--"

"You mustn't waste your strength talking," she interrupted quietly. "Just
tell me which way to go, and we'll start."

"We?" he repeated sharply. "But you're not going."

"Of course I am. Did you think for a moment I'd let you take that ride
alone?" She smiled faintly with a brave attempt at lightness. "You'd be
falling off and breaking another rib. Please don't make difficulties. I'm
going with you, and that's an end of it."

Perhaps the firmness of her manner made Buck realize the futility of
further protest, or possibly he was in no condition to argue. At all
events he gave in, and when the girl swung herself into the saddle, the
slow journey began.

To Mary Thorne the memory of it remained ever afterward in her mind a
chaotic medley of strange emotions and impressions, vague