THE STORM
There came to the girls’ ears the grumbling of thunder, faint at first
but growing louder as it flung itself against the lofty mountains. A
flash of lightning illumined the semi-dusk of the woods.
The ponies pricked up their ears nervously and danced a little,
threatening to unseat their riders. But the girls spoke to them gently
and soothingly and in a moment had them under control again.
“I suppose we ought to go back,” said Dorothy. “You know what storms are
up here. And the ponies don’t like the thunder.”
“So it seems,” said Tavia dryly, adding, as she turned her pony so that
its nose was pointing toward the trail again: “You may go back, if you
like, Dorothy Dale, but I am going on. You are not afraid of a little
storm, are you?”
“Only this doesn’t promise to be a little one,” replied Dorothy shortly.
“But come on. If we keep the ponies on the trail——”
“All may yet be well,” finished Tavia. “Whew—that was a bad one!” she
added, as a terrific crash of thunder flung itself against the
mountainside and retreated, grumbling ominously.
The ponies attempted to stand on their hind legs again but the girls
only urged them on the faster.
The storm was waxing fast and furious now. The wind tore down upon them
in titanic gusts, catching at their breath, whipping twigs and branches
across their faces, fairly blinding them.
Another terrific crash of thunder came, a vicious streak of lightning,
and then the rain!
It did not come slowly in gentle little drops, but burst upon them in
full fury, soaked them to the skin in its first onslaught, enveloped
them in a solid sheet of water.
They struggled on, urging their reluctant ponies up the rocky trail—up
and up, while the trail grew ever steeper, the ground more thickly
strewn with rocks and tree stumps, more impassable.
It seemed to the girls that they were like flies, clinging to the walls
of a precipice.
A hideous crash of thunder, more terrific than any that had preceded it,
broke shatteringly above them and seemed to cause the very ground
beneath their feet to tremble.
Dorothy’s pony, scrambling over a huge boulder in the trail, slipped,
stumbled, caught itself, and then, in fright, reared suddenly backward.
Caught unawares, Dorothy shot from her saddle like a bullet from a gun
and rolled down the steep incline directly beneath the feet of Tavia’s
prancing pony.
The whole thing was so sudden, so horrible, that Tavia could only gasp
in sickening fear.
But it was the gallant beast she rode that saved the life of her chum,
helpless beneath the death-dealing hoofs.
The pony reared, balanced with his forefeet in the air for a moment
while Dorothy’s life hung in the balance. Then, with a terrific effort
and almost human intelligence, he flung himself backward and to one
side.
Even then his forefeet came to earth gently, tentatively, making sure
that they touched only earth and stone. Then he stood quite still,
shivering.
Dorothy lay beneath his body, her arm flung out, her face turned upward
to the sky. She was as still as death and a sinister red spot grew upon
her forehead—grew and widened while two tiny rivulets of blood ran down
her cheek.
For a moment Tavia stared down at her chum as though paralyzed. She
dared not move for fear her action might excite the shivering pony and
cause him to move only the fraction of an inch.
“But I must get down,” she told herself dully, as though in a terrible
dream. “Any minute the pony may move. Anyway—oh, Dorothy! Dorothy!”
Slowly and with infinite care she let herself down from the saddle on
the opposite side from her chum, speaking gently to the pony, patting
his neck, urging him to stand quietly.
But the gallant little beast needed no urging. He knew as well as Tavia
that a human life depended on his ability to remain absolutely still.
Except for the nervous quivering of his muscles he stood like a horse
carved out of rock as Tavia lifted her chum from her perilous position
and laid her gently on the grass beside the trail.
The thunder was more frequent, more deafening in its increasing
nearness. The rain continued to pour down in a great torrential flood.
Tavia’s hair had come down and was clinging soddenly to her face and
neck. She had to push it back before she could look at Dorothy, shake
her, wildly call her by name, beg her sobbingly to open her eyes and
look at her.
The blood was still coming from the cut in Dorothy’s forehead, but aside
from that vivid blotch of color, her face was deadly pale.
Tavia sought for and found a clean handkerchief in the pocket of her
riding coat. With this she sought to staunch the wound. The handkerchief
became red and sodden and still the wound bled freely, sickeningly.
Tavia stumbled to her feet and, with a hand before her eyes to ward off
the twigs and branches that lashed at her face, fought her way back
along the trail toward a spot where they had passed a mountain brook.
She knelt beside the stream, saturated the handkerchief with the almost
ice-cold water, and returned to Dorothy. Several times she made the
trip, until she was bruised and torn and panting.
Finally she had her reward. The blood ceased to flow and, washing away
the last traces of it, Tavia was able to inspect the wound more closely.
To her surprise and intense relief she found that, instead of being on
her forehead, the cut began farther up, on the scalp, just reaching past
the line of the hair.
That then, was the reason it had bled so profusely. A scalp wound is in
appearance usually worse than in reality, sending out wild signals of
distress when there is really very little to be distressed about.
Dorothy had evidently in falling struck upon a pointed stone, gashing
the scalp jaggedly and in such a way that it seemed an ugly wound.
“Might have killed her,” muttered Tavia. “If she would only open her
eyes! Perhaps some water—” But the irony of that suggestion curved her
lips in a wry smile. Foolish to talk of water when nature was supplying
it in bucketfuls, free of charge!
At that moment Dorothy stirred, lifted her hand in an aimless gesture
and made as though to rise.
Tavia put a hand beneath her chum’s head, lifting her a little.
“Take it easy, Doro honey,” she advised gently. “You have had a pretty
hard knock, and it may take a little while for you to remember what
happened. Oh, keep still, will you!” she cried to the elements in
senseless fury as a crash of thunder shook the earth, drowning out her
last words. “Don’t you know it isn’t polite to interrupt a person while
she’s talking? Doro darling,” as Dorothy once more made an effort to
rise, “how are you feeling?”
“All right—I guess,” said Dorothy unsteadily. “I seem a little—dizzy.”
Tavia tried to laugh and made a rather dismal failure of it.
“I should think you might,” she said. “After a fall like that!”
“What happened?” asked Dorothy, sitting up, her hand feeling
instinctively for the painful cut in her head. “I fainted, didn’t I?”
“You surely did, Doro, my love!” responded Tavia, once more herself now
that Dorothy was out of danger. “You fainted good and plenty, and I
don’t mind telling you you gave me the scare of my life.”
“Sorry—but I guess we had better get away from here,” said Dorothy,
still faintly, looking uneasily about her. She clapped her hands to her
ears nervously as another thunder clap broke above their heads. “Help
me, Tavia, please—I feel a little—weak.”
She tried to stumble to her feet, but sank down again with a cry of
alarm.
“Not so fast!” Tavia scolded her. “You lost quite a good deal of blood,
my dear, if you did but know it, and naturally you feel pretty faint.”
“Blood!” echoed Dorothy alarmed. “I had no idea——”
“Only a scalp wound,” Tavia said quickly. “But it bled like sixty. Now,
let’s try it again. That’s the idea. Feel better?”
Dorothy stood, swaying a little on her feet, Tavia’s supporting arm
about her shoulders.
“I guess I don’t remember just what happened, but I guess I must owe my
life to you, Tavia.”
“No, you don’t,” denied Tavia quickly, adding, as she pointed to the
pony standing quietly enough now where she had left it. “There’s the
fellow you ought to thank!”