ld strike out across the
open country, feeling sure that its high walls could soon be seen rising
like a wall of mist beyond the rain.

Flying along on feet unconscious of fatigue, fighting through the storm
and darkness and calling aloud when she had the strength, in about an
hour Jack reached the ravine. No actual sight of the trail had guided
her, but an instinctive feeling for the right direction. Now she sat
down for a few minutes in the shelter of an overhanging rock, hoping the
storm would blow over or that Jim would find her. But the thunder
crashed on, and the wind in the jagged rocks of the ravine moaned and
sighed like lost souls wandering in the walled chambers of the canyons,
crying for release. Had she ever been rash enough to say she loved the
splendid western storms? Jack asked herself. Yes, even in her terror and
loneliness she realized there was something magnificent and
awe-inspiring in their sudden fury and abandon, as though nature,
yielding to a burst of elemental passion, poured forth her anger on the
earth in the sweeping rain and furious charges of electricity.

When half an hour passed, the young girl crept out of her hiding place.
Perhaps the storm was less severe; anyhow, she would rather face any
fate than remain in the gorge all night. It was now too dark to see
anything except the vague outlines of rocks and bunches of low shrubs.
For a moment Jack stood still, trying to remember whether she should
turn to the right or left, and straining her eyes to catch sight of a
familiar object that might help her to decide. Then she moved off in
exactly the wrong direction, with each step getting farther and farther
away from her friends and shelter.

Trained to a knowledge of animal life in the plains of the great West,
Jacqueline knew the call of almost every wild beast that is still native
to the uncivilized portions of the western states. After walking for
another hour, a sound filled her with horror. It was the low cry of a
cougar! A thicket of trees and underbrush bordered one side of her path;
on the other, lay the deep hollow of the ravine. And it had just begun
to dawn on Jack that she was going in the wrong direction; she had
passed by no such dense shrubbery in her morning journey. But this was
not the time to turn back, nor must she show hesitation or fear, well
knowing that the wild creature behind her would dog the footsteps of a
solitary traveler, keeping only a short distance away,