slowly in, her courage began to fail. She might
never reach the other shore. The black night and the rain made it seem
very far away.

She stopped, thigh deep, to breathe another prayer to the far-away God of
her imagination, who sat on a throne in the skies, an arbitrary emperor
of the universe. He had helped her once to-night. Maybe He would again.

"O God, don't please lemme drown," she said aloud, in order to be quite
sure her petition would be heard.

Deeper into the current she moved. The water reached her waist. Presently
its sweep lifted her from the bottom. She threw herself forward and began
to swim. It did not seem to her that she was making any headway. The
heavy skirts dragged down her feet and obstructed free movement of them.
Not an expert swimmer, she was soon weary. Weights pulled at the arms as
they swept back the water in the breast-stroke. It flashed through her
mind that she could not last much longer. Almost at the same instant she
discovered the bank. Her feet touched bottom. She shuffled heavily
through the shallows and sank down on the shore completely exhausted.

Later, it was in June's mind that she must have been unconscious. When
she took note of her surroundings she was lying on a dry pebbly wash
which the stream probably covered in high water. Snowflakes fell on her
cheek and melted there. She rose, stiff and shivering. In crossing the
river the brogans had washed from her neck. She moved forward in her
stocking feet. For a time she followed the Rio Blanco, then struck
abruptly to the right through the sagebrush and made a wide circuit.

It was definitely snowing now and the air was colder. June's feet were
bleeding, though she picked a way in the grama-grass and the tumbleweed
to save them as much as possible. Once she stepped into a badger hole
covered with long buffalo grass and strained a tendon.

She had plenty of pluck. The hardships of the frontier had instilled into
her endurance. Though she had pitied herself when she was riding beside
Jake Houck to moral disaster, she did not waste any now because she was
limping painfully through the snow with the clothes freezing on her body.
She had learned to stand the gaff, in the phrase of the old bullwhacker
who had brought her down from Rawlins. It was a part of her code that
physical pain and discomfort must be trodden under foot and disregarded.

A long detour brought her back to the river. She plodded on through the
storm, her l