her.

"Yer a powerful peart sort of a gal, an' ez purty ez a fawn, yer mammy
kin git 'long without the medicine a little while, an'----"

He did not finish the sentence, for before his hand could touch her
Rachel's whip cut a deep wale across his face, and then it fell so
savagely upon the mare's flank that the high-spirited animal sprung
forward as if shot from a catapult, and was a hundred yards away before
the rascals really comprehended what had happened.

Onward sped the mettled brute, so maddened by the first cruel blow she
had ever received that she refused to obey the rein, but made her own
way by and through such objects as she encountered. When she at last
calmed down the road was clear and lonely, and Rachel began searching
for indications of a favorable point of approach to the river, that
hinted at a bridge or a ford. While engaged in this she heard voices
approaching. A moment's listening to teh mingling of tones convinced
her that it was another crowd of stragglers, and she obeyed her first
impulse, which was to leap her horse over a low stone wall to her right.
Taking her head again, the mare did not stop until she galloped down to
the water's edge.

"I'll accept this as lucky," said Rachel to herself. "The ancients
trusted more to their horses' instincts than their own perceptions in
times of danger, and I'll do the same. I'll cross here."

She urged the mare into the water. The beast picked her way among the
boulders on the bottom successfully for a few minutes. The water rose
to Rachel's feet, but that seemed its greatest depth, and in a few more
yards she would gain the opposite bank, when suddenly the mare stepped
upon a slippery steep, her feet went from under her instantly, and steed
and rider rolled in the sweeping flood of ice-cold water. Rachel's first
thought was that she should surely drown, but hope came back as she
caught a limb swinging from a tree on the bank. With this she held her
head above water until she could collect herself a little, and then with
great difficulty pulled herself up the muddy, slippery bank. The weight
of her soaked clothes added greatly to the difficulty and the fatigue,
and she lay for some little time prone upon her face across the furrows
of a cotton field, before she could stand erect. At last she was able
to stand up, and she relieved herself somewhat by taking off her calico
riding skirt and wringing the water from it. Her mare had also gained
the bank n