At the instant a cloud floated over the sun, and soon a black bank began
to fill up the sky above the cañon. As they ate their breakfast in the
tent, the morning darkened forebodingly. Felipa finished the big quart
cup of weak coffee hurriedly, and stood up, pushing back her
camp-stool. Her horse and four others were waiting.
Landor had agreed to trust her to Cairness and an escort of three
soldiers. He could ill spare time from the telegraph line, under the
circumstances; it might be too imperatively needed at any moment. He
mounted his wife quickly. "You are not afraid?" he asked. But he knew so
well that she was not, that he did not wait for her answer.
Cairness mounted, and looked up anxiously at the sky, as he gathered his
reins between his fingers. The wind had begun to howl through the
branches of the trees. It promised to be a wild ride. "I will be back
to-night, Landor, to report," he said; "that is, if the storm doesn't
delay us." And they started off down the hill.
He rode beside Mrs. Landor along the road in the ravine bed, and the
soldiers followed some twenty yards in the rear. They were making as
much haste as was wise at the outset, and Felipa bent forward against
the ever rising wind, as her horse loped steadily on.
There was a mutter of thunder and a far-off roar, a flame of lightning
through the trees, and the hills and mountains shook. Just where they
rode the cañon narrowed to hardly more than a deep gulch, and the river
ran close beside the road.
"We must get out of this," Cairness started to say, urging his little
bronco; but even as he spoke there was a murmur, a rustle, a hissing
roar, and the rain fell in one solid sheet, blinding them, beating them
down.
"Take care!" yelled Cairness, as Felipa, dazed and without breath,
headed straight for the stream. He bent and snatched at her bridle, and,
swerving, started up the sheer side of the hill. She clung to the mane
instinctively, but her horse stumbled, struggled, slipped, and
scrambled. She had lost all control of it, and the earth and stones gave
way beneath its hoofs just as a great wall of water bore down the bed of
the river, sweeping trees and rocks away, and making the ground quiver.
"Let go your stirrup!" cried Cairness, in her ear; and as she kicked her
foot loose, he leaned far from the saddle and threw his arm around her,
swinging her up in front of him across the McLellan pommel, and driving
the spurs into his horse's belly. It had the advantage of her horse in
that it was an Indian animal, sure of foot as a burro, and much quicker.
With one dash it was up the hillside, while the other rolled over and
over, down into the torrent of the cloud burst.
Cairness slid to the ground, still holding her close, and set her upon
her feet at once. He had not so much as tightened the grasp of his arm
about her, nor held her one-half second longer than there was absolute
need.
He tried to see if the soldiers were safe, but though they were not a
hundred feet away, the trunks and the mist of water hid them. The rain
still pounded down, but the rush of the wind was lessening sensibly.
Felipa leaned against the tree under which they were, fairly protected
from the worst of the storm; and Cairness stood beside her, holding his
winded horse. There was nothing to be said that could be said. She had
lost for once her baffling control of the commonplace in speech, and so
they stood watching the rain beat through the wilderness, and were
silent.
When the storm had fairly passed, they found Felipa's gray lodged in the
root of a tree some distance down the creek; in no way hurt, oddly
enough, but trembling and badly frightened. The saddle, even, was
uninjured, though the pigskin was water-soaked and slippery.
Cairness sent one of the soldiers back to report their safety to Landor,
and they mounted and hurried on again, swimming the river twice, and
reaching the post some time after noon.
The commandant's wife took Mrs. Landor in, and would have put her to bed
with hot drinks and blankets, but that Felipa would have nothing more
than some dry clothes and a wrapper in place of her wet habit. The
clothes were her own, brought by one of the men, safe in a rubber
poncho, but the wrapper belonged to her hostess, who was portly, whereas
Felipa was slender. But to Cairness, who had stopped for luncheon, she
seemed, in the voluminous dull red draperies, more splendid than ever
before.
He rode away at once after they had lunched. And Felipa went to her
room, and dropped down shivering beside the little red-hot iron stove,
moaning between her clenched teeth.