Through the rustling underbrush of the lower slope, the main trail leading downward from Gray Cloud Pass was firm under their feet.
“Looks like Broadway, don’t it, after that squirrel track back yonder?” observed one of the men, as they stopped to rest for a little. The other man went to catch Nancy’s pony which had been turned loose before the storm and which now came, stamping and snorting, through the dark, drawn by the lantern light and by the desire for company of its own kind.
It was possible to carry the litter between two horses now, so that the doctor mounted, left one man to follow on foot, and ordered them all to press forward. A moving shadow in the darkness proved to be John Herrick’s black mare, who had managed to scramble to her feet and stood, with head drooping and one leg helpless, beside the path.
“We can’t stop for her now,” the doctor said. “I will send some one back to see if there is anything to be done.”
The poor creature was left behind, although Beatrice leaned from her saddle to touch the soft anxious nose that was thrust out to her, and although a pleading whinny could be heard long after the darkness had swallowed up the suffering pony.
They went on steadily and quickly now, with Beatrice nodding in her saddle from unbelievable weariness. They were fording a stream; they were threading the grove of aspen-trees; they had reached the last mile of their journey. The whispering leaves were all speaking together in the morning breeze; the birds were beginning to sing; the darkness had faded so that the light of Beatrice’s lantern had shrunk to the pale ghost of a flame. She looked back to see the bare granite slope above her turn from gray to rose, and to see the stark summit of Gray Cloud Mountain shine in sudden silver radiance as the sunrise touched it.
Almost immediately she saw the men ahead of her stop, dismount, and lean over the litter.
“He is awake, and I think he wants you,” one of them said to Nancy, but she listened and shook her head.
“He is not really conscious,” she answered, “and it is my Aunt Anna that he is asking for.”
It was a week, a dragging, interminable week, before any one was able to know just what were to be the results of that fateful expedition up the slopes of Gray Cloud Mountain. Nancy, stiff and aching in every muscle from so much unwonted riding, was the first to recover and to set about her housekeeping. Beatrice had sprained her knee in that perilous moment when she dropped the ax over the mountain-side, but she had scarcely noticed the mishap until, slipping from the saddle at her own door, she found herself unable to walk into the house. For three days she was almost helpless; by the end of seven, however, she was able to get about and help Nancy and Christina with their work.