ch hung loose suddenly jerked through his fingers and the
mare fell crashing to her knees. She was down before he knew it, head
forward, and then with a quivering subsidence, prone in a tangle of
torn harness. He urged her up with a jerked rein, she made a
struggling effort, but fell back, and a groan, singularly human in its
pain, burst from her. The wagon behind pounded almost on them, the
mules crowding against each other. Daddy John's voice rising in a
cracked hail. Courant and Leff came up from the rear, splashing
through the river.

"What's happened?" said the former.

"It's Bess," said David, his face pallid with contrition. "I hope to
God she's not hurt. Up, Bess, there! Up on your feet, old girl!"

At her master's voice the docile brute made a second attempt to rise,
but again sank down, her sides panting, her head strained up.

Leff leaped off his horse.

"Damn her, I'll make her get up," he said, and gave her a violent kick
on the ribs. The mare rolled an agonized eye upon him, and with a
sudden burst of fury he rained kick after kick on her face.

David gave a strange sound, a pinched, thin cry, as if wrung from him
by unbearable suffering, and leaped over the wheel. He struck Leff on
the chest, a blow so savage and unexpected that it sent him staggering
back into the stream, where, his feet slipping among the stones, he
fell sprawling.

"Do that again and I'll kill you," David cried, and moving to the horse
stood over it with legs spread and fists clinched for battle.

Leff scrambled to his knees, his face ominous, and Courant, who had
been looking at the mare, apparently indifferent to the quarrel, now
slipped to the ground.

"Let that hound alone," he said. "I'm afraid it's all up with Bess."

David turned and knelt beside her, touching her with hands so tremulous
he could hardly direct them. His breath came in gasps, he was shaken
and blinded with passion, high-pitched and nerve-wracking as a woman's.

Leff rose, volleying curses.

"Here you," Courant shifted a hard eye on him, "get out. Get on your
horse and go," then turning to Bess, "Damn bad luck if we got to lose
her."

Leff stood irresolute, his curses dying away in smothered mutterings.
His skin was gray, a trickle of blood ran down from a cut on his neck,
his face showed an animal ferocity, dark and lowering as the front of
an angry bull. With a slow lift of his head he looked at Susan, who
was still in the wagon. S