reamed at her helplessness. At last she
managed to climb flounderingly back into her seat, and, bending her
stiffened arms to Jim's neck, she moaned and cried to him. When again
she could hold her seat no longer, she fell to the horse's side,
dragged herself along in the frozen slush, and, screaming with the
pain of her freezing hands, drew herself up into the saddle.

She knew that she dare not venture this again--that if she did so she
could never remount. She felt now that she should never live to reach
Medicine Bend. She rode on and on and on--would it never end? She
begged God to send a painless death to those she rode to save, and
when the prayer passed her failing senses a new terror awakened her,
for she found herself falling out of the saddle. With excruciating
torment she recovered her poise. Reeling from side to side, she fought
the torpor away. Her mind grew clearer and her tears had ceased. She
prayed for a light. The word caught between her stiffened lips and she
mumbled it till she could open them wide and scream it out. Then came
a sound like the beating of great drums in her ears. It was the crash
of Jim's hoofs on the river bridge, and she was in Medicine Bend.

A horse, galloping low and heavily, slued through the snow from Fort
Street into Boney, and, where it had so often stopped before, dashed
up on the sidewalk in front of the little shop. The shock was too much
for its unconscious rider, and, shot headlong from her saddle, Dicksie
was flung bruised and senseless against Marion's door.

CHAPTER XLII

AT THE DOOR

She woke in a dream of hoofs beating at her brain. Distracted words
fell from her lips, and when she opened her swollen eyes and saw those
about her she could only scream.

Marion had called up the stable, but the stablemen could only tell her
that Dicksie's horse, in terrible condition, had come in riderless.
While Barnhardt, the railway surgeon, at the bedside administered
restoratives, Marion talked with him of Dicksie's sudden and
mysterious coming. Dicksie, lying in pain and quite conscious, heard
all, but, unable to explain, moaned in her helplessness. She heard
Marion at length tell the doctor that McCloud was out of town, and the
news seemed to bring back her senses. Then, rising in the bed, while
the surgeon and Marion coaxed her to lie down, she clutched at their
arms and, looking from one to the other, told her story. When it was
done she swooned, but she woke to