THE RIDE WITH DEATH
“So steady and firm, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on;
Reaching low, breathing loud, as a creviced wind blows;
Yet we spoke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer;
There was work to be done, there was death in the air;
And the chance was as one to a thousand.”
Sibyl had buttoned her glove, and she now took the rein herself and
settled firmly in the saddle.
“Do you think there is danger? How horrid to have a thing like this
happen and spoil our ride!”
To her unpracticed eyes the appearance of the moiling herd was not as
threatening as at first. The cattle in front were pushing into those
behind and staying their forward progress. Farther back, where the
stampede madness was doing its deadliest work, she could not see, for
the cattle there were hidden by the dust cloud.
“We must get out of this,” said Clayton, in a nervous voice, as he set
his horse in motion. “Unless we ride fast they may cut us off at the
lower end of the cañon.”
The forward line of moving cattle was hurled on again, as the receding
wave is caught by the one behind it and flung against the shore. The
thunder of pounding hoofs rose like the lashing of surf on a rocky
coast. Then that long line, flashing out of the dust, deepened
backward beneath the lifting cloud until it resembled a stretch of
tossing sea. The resemblance was more than fanciful. The irregular
heaving motion of a choppy sea was there, the white glint of horns was
as the shine of wave crests, the tumultuous roar rose and fell like
the thunder of billows, and the dust cloud hovered like thick mist.
Clayton and Sibyl were galloping at a swift pace. Terror clutched at
her heart now and shone in her dark eyes. She heard the mad roar
behind her, and dared not look back. Clayton looked back, and his face
became set and white.
“A little faster,” he begged, when he had thus glanced behind.
He struck her horse with his hand to urge it on, while his heels
flailed the sides of his own beast. Her ribboned whip lifted and fell,
and she cried out to her horse in fear. The whole herd was in motion.
It was crescent-shaped; widest in its center, like the horned moon;
one end rested, or rather moved, on the cañon’s rim; the other, out on
the flat mesa, was swinging in toward the cañon, farther down. It was
this lower point of the crescented herd that Clayton feared most; the
great moon-shaped mass was crumpling together, its ends were
converging, and if that lower point reached the cañon before the
riders could pass through the gap which now beckoned there, they would
be caught in the loop of the crumpled crescent and crushed to death or
hurled into the cañon. The only hope lay in passing through that
opening while it still remained an opening. And toward that gap they
were riding, with a portion of the herd thundering behind along the
cañon wall.
“We can make it,” Clayton cried hopefully; “we can make it!”
And he urged the horses on.
Though the words encouraged her, Sibyl could not fail to perceive the
deadly peril of the closing gap toward which they were speeding.
Fortunately the ground was level, broken only by grassy hillocks and
bunches of sage. The few obstructing plum bushes that had survived the
fire or had sprouted since that time had been passed already.
As the cattle at the lower end of the crescent were thus brought near,
Sibyl beheld the flecking spume of their foaming mouths as it was
flung into the air and glistened on their heads and bodies. She could
even see the insane glare of their eyes, as they drove toward her in
their unheeding course. The thunder of their hoofs was making the
ground shake.
“Ride, ride!” Clayton shouted, his voice tremulous. “We can get
through. We must get through!”
Even the horses seemed to know what threatened now. Leaping into the
narrowing gap, they answered this last appeal of heel, whip, and voice
with a further increase of speed. Clayton bent forward in his saddle
as if he would hurl himself on, and in the extremity of his anxiety
reached out his stiff hand toward Sibyl’s bridle to urge her horse to
even a swifter pace.
They were riding dangerously near the cañon wall. Hidden as the cañon
was by tall grass, the cattle were driving straight toward it, as
though determined to hurl themselves and these wild riders into its
depths.
And now the heaving backs, the tapering horns, the glaring eyes, the
shining gossamer threads of wispy spume, and the tortured dust cloud,
seemed to be flung together into the very faces of the riders. For a
moment Sibyl thought all was lost; in imagination she was being
impaled on those tapering horns. She heard Clayton yelling
encouragement. Then, with spurning feet, the horses passed through the
narrow passage; and behind them broke a bellowing tumult, as the
foremost cattle began to plunge downward into the cañon.
Sibyl reeled in her saddle, and Clayton put out his stiff hand to
support her.
Behind them was that wild roar, where the living cascade was pouring
over the cañon wall; and the danger was behind them, and past, he
thought.
[Illustration: “Behind them broke a bellowing tumult, as the foremost
cattle began to plunge downward into the cañon”]
But suddenly the shooting torrent of bellowing animals was stopped.
The portion of the herd which had followed madly after the fleeing
riders along the wall, and had been augmented greatly in numbers,
struck this lower line. It was like the impact of two cross sections
of a landslide. The weaker gave way, over-borne and crushed; and the
larger herd streamed on, over a tangle of fallen bodies, adding to the
tangled pile and treading each other down in wild confusion. The
danger was not past.
Clayton’s stiff hand settled Sibyl’s reeling form in the saddle. He
was shaking with the strain of his exertions and his emotions. His
face was set like a mask and his dark eyes glittered feverishly.
“We must ride on!” he urged. “Just a little farther! I’ll help you,
but we must ride on!”
Returning fear put strength into her quivering body. She sat erect
once more, and again plied the ribboned whip. The horses, with sides
smoking and flanks heaving, galloped on. They had made a terrible run,
as their dripping bodies and straining red nostrils showed, but they
were still game, and they responded to this new call as nobly as to
the first.
The section of the herd that had overwhelmed and trampled under foot
the cattle in its way, came straight on, now and then tossing an
unfortunate into the cañon as a splinter is flung out from a revolving
and broken wheel. But the speedier horses drew away again.
While hope was thus returning to Sibyl her horse went down, having
thrust a foot into a grass-grown badger hole, and she was torn from
the saddle and hurled violently through the air. She struck heavily
and lay stunned. Clayton was off his horse and at her side in an
instant, but had caution enough left to cling to his bridle rein.
Sibyl lay groaning; but when he put his strong sound arm about her,
she rose to her feet. Blood showed on her lips.
“It’s nothing,” she said, as he wiped it away with his handkerchief.
“I—I think I have only cut my lip.” The thunder of the approaching
hoofs frightened her. “Can you help me into the saddle?”
She clung to him weakly.
“Yes,” he answered, supporting her.
But when they turned to her horse he saw that in its fall it had
broken its leg. It stood helplessly by the badger hole, from which it
had scrambled, holding up that dangling leg.
“You must take my horse!” he said.
“And leave you here?”
“I—I can outrun them, maybe; if I had a revolver I might stop the
foremost and get ground to stand on.”
She put her hand to her bosom and drew out a small revolver.
“It may be foolish for a woman to carry such a weapon, but it will be
useful now.”
It was but a little thing, a woman’s toy, yet he took it eagerly.
“I can turn them aside with this; you must take my horse at once.”
He lifted her in his arms and placed her in his saddle. She did not
stop for conventionalities, but set a foot in each stirrup.
“You can make it yet!” he panted. “Go; don’t think of me; I will stop
them here!”
He knew he could neither stop them nor turn them aside. She did not
want to leave him, but fear tore at her heart; the herd was on them
again, though the halt had been so brief.
“Go!” he yelled, and struck the horse with the shining revolver.
Its quick leap almost threw her, but she clutched the horn of the
saddle and raced on.
Clayton turned to face the mad stampede. That line of tossing heads
and clicking horns was not a hundred yards away. He looked at the
little revolver and smiled. The strange light which had so startled
Justin was again in his eyes.
“I will not leave you to be trodden to death by them, old fellow,” he
said to the horse; “you deserve a better fate than that.”
With the words, he put the pistol to the head of the trembling horse
and fired. It was but a small pellet of lead, but it went true, and
the horse fell. He stepped up to its body and sent the second shot at
the leading steer. He glanced at the sky an instant, then at Sibyl
fleeing away along the cañon wall in the direction of the distant
ranch buildings. The strange light deepened in his eyes.
“I have saved her,” he whispered; “and even God can die, when the
reason is great enough!”
Sibyl did not hear those shots in the confusion that clamored behind
her, and she had not courage to look back. Having lost her ribboned
whip in the fall, she beat the horse with her gloved hand. A numbing
pain gripped her heart and made her breathing quick and heavy. At
times her sight blurred, and then fear smote hardest, for she felt
that she was falling. Yet she rode on, reeling in the deep saddle, and
when faint maintained her position by clinging to the saddle horn. At
the door of the ranch house she fell forward on the neck of the horse
and slipped in a limp heap to the ground; but she was up again, with
hand pressed to her heart, when Pearl Harkness dashed out to assist
her.
Behind Pearl came Lucy Davison and Mary Jasper. They had heard the
thundering of hoofs, and but a minute before had seen Sibyl ride into
view at that mad pace from behind the screening stables. She had
outridden the stampeded cattle. The curving cañon wall had turned them
at last, and they were beginning to mill.
There was blood on Sibyl’s lips and a look of death in her ghastly
face; yet she smiled, and tried to stand more erect, when she saw
Mary.
“Help me into the house, please,” she whispered faintly; “I—I’m
afraid I’m hurt.”
Supported by Pearl on one side and by Lucy and Mary on the other,
Sibyl entered the house. Inside the doorway she reeled and put her
hand to her eyes. She stiffened with a shudder, as she recovered.
“I must lie down!” she gasped; but when she took another step the
blindness and faintness returned, and she fell, in spite of the
supporting arms.
Pearl’s cry of alarm and consternation reached the room where Philip
Davison lay. It was a lower room and furthest removed from the mesa,
but he had heard the rumble of the stampede. The sound of excited
voices, Sibyl’s heavy fall, and that outcry from Pearl Harkness,
called back the wasted strength to his weakened body. He appeared in
the connecting doorway, half dressed, and with a blanket drawn round
his shrunken shoulders. He looked a spectre and not a man; his bearded
cheeks were hollowed, his straight nose appeared to crook over the
sunken mouth like the beak of a bird, and his blue eyes, gleaming from
cavernous sockets, stared with unnatural brightness. Seeing Sibyl on
the floor with the frightened women about her, he came forward and
offered to help. Nothing could have astounded them more than this, for
they thought he had not strength to walk.
“Put her in the bed there,” he commanded, indicating an adjoining
room.
He stooped to assist in lifting her; but the faintness was passing,
and she showed that she was still able to assist herself.
“Yes, put me in the bed,” she panted.
They helped her to the bed, Davison following with tottering steps,
trying to aid. Mary shook the pillow into shape and placed it under
her head. Sibyl observed her and put up her gloved hand to touch
Mary’s hair.
“You are here, dear; I—I am so glad!”
“Where is Clayton?” said Davison, turning about. “He is needed.”
A cowboy came running into the house to report the stampede of the
cattle.
“Let them go,” Davison cried; “you ride at once for Doctor Clayton.
Tell him to come immediately.”
Pearl Harkness had hurried into the kitchen, thinking of hot-water
bags. Mary stared into Sibyl’s face and inanely patted the pillow
tucked under her head. Lucy was wiping away the blood that oozed from
between Sibyl’s lips.
“Come nearer, dear,” said Sibyl in a weak voice, speaking to Mary.
“Come nearer, dear; I want you to kiss me and forgive me. I—I—”
Her ghastly features became more pinched and ghastly; her hand wavered
toward Mary’s face. Mary took it and placed it against her warm,
tear-wet cheek, in the old way.
Sibyl stared at her.
“I—I can’t see you, dear; but you have hold of my hand. The room must
be growing dark, or—or is it my eyes? The windows haven’t been
closed, have they?”
“The windows are open,” said Mary; “wide open.”
Sibyl still stared at her, while Pearl bustled into the room with
cloths and a water bottle.
“It—it is growing dark to me. I’m dying, and I know it. My—my horse
fell, and—and Clayton was with me; he is out there yet—where—where
the cattle are.”
She made another effort to see.
“Hold—hold my hand tight, Mary; and—and please kiss me, won’t you?
Hold my hand tight! I loved you, Mary—I loved you! Oh, I can’t see
you—I can’t see you at all! Kiss me, and forgive me. I don’t want to
go into the dark! I always loved the light—the light!”
As Mary stooped with that forgiving kiss, Sibyl touched her hair with
affection.
“I forgive you everything,” said Mary.
“You won’t believe that I truly loved you, Mary, but I did; always
remember that I did. Oh, I want the light—the light—I can’t see you!
I’m afraid there isn’t any light—beyond! I could bear the fires of
hell if they but gave light and I could live on. But I’m
afraid—afraid, Mary, that—that there isn’t anything beyond; and that
I shall never see you again!”
She put up her hands, gasping for breath.
“I’ve been a wicked woman, but I loved you, Mary; oh, I loved you; and
I tried to shield you all I could! I oughtn’t to have taken you to
Denver, but I wanted you, and I was selfish. Oh, this darkness! Open
the windows; I’m—I’m afraid of the darkness! Open the—windows; I
must—must have light!”
But the light did not return.
Clayton’s body, mangled beyond recognition, was found near that of the
horse he had mercifully slain.