“Your horse is not fit to go back for a day or two,” Dr. Minturn said at breakfast. “You pushed him too hard when you climbed the pass, and you should leave him here to rest. I will lend you my brown Presto. He is not such a pony as Buck, I admit, but he will carry you safely enough. You can come back for your horse later, or I will send him over the range as soon as some one passes.”
The sun was high when she and Nancy set out together, shining above the pass as they mounted upward.
“But there is something the matter with it,” Beatrice declared to her sister; “there doesn’t seem to be any warmth in it, somehow.” And she shivered a little.
An unusual haze seemed to hang like a blanket between them and the sun, and the air held a strange chill. Even when wrapped in their warm coats, the two girls felt cold as they climbed to the summit of the pass and began the descent on the other side. Beatrice said very little, so busy was her mind with many difficult problems. Must she tell Aunt Anna what had happened, and let her know that all hopes of meeting her brother were at an end? Would John Herrick’s house soon be closed, and would Hester have to leave them too?
Would it be of any use—Good heavens! what was that lying beside the trail? Something huge, dark, and unwieldy was stretched out among the bushes: it was a black horse, apparently dead. They both knew those white feet and the brand on the flank. It was John Herrick’s black mare, Dolly.
They dismounted, while the poor creature opened its eyes and managed to raise its head. A horse that is so injured that it cannot get up when a person comes near is sorely hurt indeed. That much Beatrice knew, yet was powerless to discover what was the matter. By some intuition Nancy guessed one thing, at least, that was needed, for she ran to the stream, filled her felt hat with water, and brought it back, spilling and dripping, but with enough left for the poor animal to drink gratefully.
“I wish you could speak,” Beatrice said helplessly, as the mare laid her head down again. Presto nudged her inquiringly with his nose, but she did not move.
They observed as they stood looking at her, that the bridle was half torn off—that the big saddle, with broken cantle, was twisted all to one side by the pony’s fall. On the face of the mountain wall above them they could trace Dolly’s disastrous course in trampled bushes, weeds torn up by the roots, gouges in the rocky soil where she had slid and rolled and struggled to regain her footing. But look where they might, they could see no sign of John Herrick.